"Yet you won't have me?" she asked mockingly. "You're too clever for
me," he rejoined with spirit. "I'm too conceited. I must marry a girl
that'd kneel to me and think me as wise as Socrates. But he's back
again, as you say, and, in my view, his wife ought to be back again
also."

"She ought to be here," was Kitty's swift reply, "though I think mighty
little of her--mighty little, I can tell you. Stuckup, great tall stork
of a woman, that lords it over a man as though she was a goddess. Wears
diamonds in the middle of the day, I suppose, and cold-blooded as--as a
fish."

"She ought to have married me, according to your opinion of me. You said
I was a fish," remarked the Young Doctor, with a laugh.

"The whale and the catfish!"

"Heavens, what spite!" he rejoined. "Catfish--what do you know about
Mrs. Crozier? You may be brutally unjust--waspishly unjust, I should
say."

"Do I look like a wasp?" she asked half tearfully. She was in a strange
mood.

"You look like a golden busy bee," he answered. "But tell me, how did
you come to know enough about her to call her a cat?"

"Because, as you say, I was a busy golden bee," she retorted.

"That information doesn't get me much further," he answered.

"I opened that letter," she replied.

"'That letter'--you mean you opened the letter he showed us which he had
left sealed as it came to him five years ago?" The Young Doctor's face
wore a look of dismay.

"I steamed the envelope open--how else could I have done it! I steamed
it open, saw what I wanted, and closed it up again."

The Young Doctor's face was pale now. This was a terrible revelation. He
had a man's view of such conduct. He almost shrank from her, though she
stood there as inviting and innocent a specimen of girlhood as the eye
could wish to see. She did not look dishonourable.

"Do you realise what that means?" he asked in a cold, hard tone.

"Oh, come, don't put on that look and don't talk like John the
Evangelist," she retorted. "I did it, not out of curiosity, and not to
do any one harm, but to do her good--his wife."

"It was dishonourable--wicked and dishonourable."

"If you talk like that, Mr. Piety, I'm off," she rejoined, and she
started away.

"Wait--wait," he said, laying firm fingers on her arm. "Of course you
did it for a good purpose. I know. You cared enough for him for that."

He had said the right thing, and she halted and faced him. "I cared
enough to do a good deal more than th