Has he settled down to seeing
his patients again? You wrote to me saying that he was neglecting
everything."

"So he is, nearly everything, now. Bel dear, I will not be so hard upon
him any more. You must be right, that he cannot help himself, or he
would never have behaved so ill. He must be mad."

Isabel clung to her with a startled look in her eyes.

"It is the only way in which I can account for the change," continued
Laura, "for I will not believe what Aunt Grace says, that all men are
bad at heart. If they are, women must be as wicked too."

Isabel shivered slightly.

"Tell me about what he does now."

"I can't, dear," cried Laura, piteously. "I seem to know so little.
Only that he goes out soon after breakfast, and does not come back till
dinner-time, and so wet sometimes that he must have been walking about
the streets for hours."

Isabel sighed.

"I've tried--oh, how I've tried!--to win his confidence; but he says
nothing, only turns away, and goes out. It is just as if he had lost
something of which he is always in search, and every day he grows more
moody and strange."

"Then he is ill--mentally ill," cried Isabel, excitedly. "I knew that
there must be some excuse for his strange behaviour. Laura dear, my
heart has misgiven me from the first. It is all so directly opposed to
his nature and character. I will not believe that he could be so false
to everything that he has said to me."

Laura was silent again, and Isabel's careworn face flushed once more.

"You are not sisterly and true," she cried. "The world is censorious
enough without those who are nearest and dearest to us turning away and
becoming our enemies."

"I am not Fred's enemy, Bel," said Laura, gently.

"Then why are you so hard against him?"

"Because I feel that by his conduct he has put us all to shame."

"Yes, all to shame--all to shame, my dear," cried Aunt Grace, who had
entered the room unnoticed. "It's a wicked, wicked world; but it's very
good of you to come and see us, my dear, heart-broken as we are. You
have come to stop a few days, of course?"

"I? Oh, no no, no. We are staying in town," said Isabel, hurriedly,
"and I must go directly."

"I am sorry to hear that," said Aunt Grace in rather an offended tone.
"I did not think you would turn away from us in our trouble, Isabel; I
thought better of you."

"I turn away from you and Laura, Aunt Grace? Oh no, no, no."

"I'm glad to hear it, my dear