his habit to pick up the Westmore
trolley. Just as it bore down on him, and he sprang to the platform,
another car, coming in from the mills, stopped to discharge its
passengers. Among them Amherst noticed a slender undersized man in
shabby clothes, about whose retreating back, as he crossed the street to
signal a Station Avenue car, there was something dimly familiar, and
suggestive of troubled memories. Amherst leaned out and looked again:
yes, the back was certainly like Dr. Wyant's--but what could Wyant be
doing at Hanaford, and in a Westmore car?

Amherst's first impulse was to spring out and overtake him. He knew how
admirably the young physician had borne himself at Lynbrook; he even
recalled Dr. Garford's saying, with his kindly sceptical smile: "Poor
Wyant believed to the end that we could save her"--and felt again his
own inward movement of thankfulness that the cruel miracle had not been
worked.

He owed a great deal to Wyant, and had tried to express his sense of the
fact by warm words and a liberal fee; but since Bessy's death he had
never returned to Lynbrook, and had consequently lost sight of the young
doctor.

Now he felt that he ought to try to rejoin him, to find out why he was
at Hanaford, and make some proffer of hospitality; but if the stranger
were really Wyant, his choice of the Station Avenue car made it appear
that he was on his way to catch the New York express; and in any case
Amherst's engagements at Westmore made immediate pursuit impossible.

He consoled himself with the thought that if the physician was not
leaving Hanaford he would be certain to call at the house; and then his
mind flew back to Justine Brent. But the pleasure of looking forward to
her arrival was disturbed by new feelings. A sense of reserve and
embarrassment had sprung up in his mind, checking that free mental
communion which, as he now perceived, had been one of the unconscious
promoters of their friendship. It was as though his thoughts faced a
stranger instead of the familiar presence which had so long dwelt in
them; and he began to see that the feeling of intelligence existing
between Justine and himself was not the result of actual intimacy, but
merely of the charm she knew how to throw over casual intercourse.

When he had left his house, his mind was like a summer sky, all open
blue and sunlit rolling clouds; but gradually the clouds had darkened
and massed themselves, till they drew an impenetrable veil ove