even for the pleasure of a chat with you. He's not--you'll pardon me--so
good a waiter as yourself!"

He went away, smiling. Ellen looked after him with a little frown of
displeasure. From the first moment of meeting him, some months ago, she
had not liked Dr. James Van Horn. He was the city's most fashionable
surgeon, she knew, and had a large practice among folk the reverse of
"humble." She had seen in his eyes that he liked to look at her, and knew
that in the moment he had stood beside her he had lost no detail of her
face. He had also, after some subtle fashion, managed to express his
admiration by his own look, though with his smoothly spoken words he had
not hesitated to say a thing about her husband which was at once somehow
a compliment and a stab.

"I can't imagine Dr. Van Horn taking much pains with 'humble folk,'"
Ellen said to herself. "Yet he's evidently consulting with Red at this
house, which doesn't seem exactly a 'humble' abode. I wonder if they get
on well together. They're certainly not much alike."

The wait proved to be a long one. Ellen had studied her surroundings with
thoroughness in every direction before the house-door opened at last, and
the two men came down the walk together. They were talking earnestly as
they came, and at a point some yards away they ceased to advance, and
stood still, evidently in tense discussion over the case just left. They
spoke in the low tones customary with men of their profession, and their
words did not reach Ellen's ears. But it was not difficult to recognize,
as she watched their faces, that they were differing, and differing
radically, on the matter in hand.

They had turned to face each other, and neither looked her way, so