brisk, authoritative young man of the new school, who had learned
everything there was to be known about medicine except the way to behave
in a sickroom, and who abhorred a bedside manner as heartily as if it
were calomel or castor oil. His name was Darrow, and he was the
assistant of old Dr. Walker, Mrs. Carr's family physician, who never
went out at night since he had passed his seventieth birthday.
Gabriella, who liked him because he was not anecdotal and gave small
doses of medicine, hastily led the way to her mother's room before she
ran back to meet Charley Gracey at the door of the dark parlour.

"You can't see her now. The doctor is with her," she whispered. "I'll
make a light in here and you can wait."

"Let me," said Charley, quite as pleasantly as if he were not a bad
husband, while he found a match and struck it on the sole of his foot.
Then, as the gas flared up, he exclaimed, with a low whistle, "By Jove,
you're a sight, Gabriella!"

"Well, it's your fault," replied Gabriella sharply, letting him see, as
she told herself, exactly what she thought of him. "You've made Jane so
ill we thought she was dying."

"I'm sorry for that," he said, suddenly smitten with gravity. "Is she
really so bad?"

His charming freckled face, with its irrepressible humour, grew almost
grotesquely solemn, while the habitual merriment faded slowly from his
light-gray eyes, leaving them empty of expression. He was a short,
rather thick-set man, not particularly good-looking, not particularly
clever, but possessing a singular, if unaccountable, charm. Everybody