"It isn't too late to try, yet," I suggested.

"Yes, it's too late. We must wait now." He hastened to add, "Until she
yields entirely of herself."

He gave me a guilty glance when he drew near the Bentley place and we
saw a buggy standing at the gate. "The doctor!" he said, and he hurried
me up the walk to the door.

The door stood open and we heard the doctor saying to some one within:
"No, no, nothing organic at all, I assure you. One of the commonest
functional disturbances."

Miss Bentley appeared at the threshold with him, and she and Glendenning
had time to exchange a glance of anxiety and of smiling reassurance,
before she put out her hand in greeting to me, a very glad and cordial
greeting, apparently. The doctor and I shook hands, and he got himself
away with what I afterwards remembered as undue quickness, and left us
to Miss Bentley.

Glendenning was quite right about her looking better. She looked even
gay, and there was a vivid color in her checks such as I had not seen
there for many years; her lips were red, her eyes brilliant. Her face
was still perhaps as thin as ever, but it was indescribably younger.

I cannot say that there were the materials of a merrymaking amongst us,
exactly, and yet I remember that luncheon as rather a gay one, with some
laughing. I had not been till now in discovering that Miss Bentley had a
certain gift of humor, so shy and proud, if I may so express it, that it
would not show itself except upon long acquaintance, and I distinctly