But surely there was something here that was all wrong.

Anna heard a good deal of all this from her half brother's wife, the
hard speaking Mrs. Federner.

Through the fog of dust and work and furnishing in the new house, and
through the disturbed mind of Mrs. Lehntman, and with the dark hints
of Mrs. Federner, there loomed up to Anna's sight a man, a new doctor
that Mrs. Lehntman knew.

Anna had never met the man but she heard of him very often now. Not
from her friend, the widow Mrs. Lehntman. Anna knew that Mrs. Lehntman
made of him a mystery that Anna had not the strength just then to
vigorously break down.

Mrs. Federner gave always dark suggestions and unpleasant hints. Even
good Mrs. Drehten talked of it.

Mrs. Lehntman never spoke of the new doctor more than she could help.
This was most mysterious and unpleasant and very hard for our good
Anna to endure.

Anna's troubles came all of them at once.

Here in Mrs. Lehntman's house loomed up dismal and forbidding, a
mysterious, perhaps an evil man. In Dr. Shonjen's house were beginning
signs of interest in the doctor in a woman.

This, too, Mrs. Federner often told to the poor Anna. The doctor
surely would be married soon, he liked so much now to go to Mr.