woman, and very uncertain work for anyone. You must have had a tremendous
desire to benefit your race."

His characterization of her motive was so distasteful that she made no
reply, and left him to his conjectures, in which he did not appear
unhappy. "How do you find Mrs. Maynard to-day?" she asked.

He looked at her with an instant coldness, as if he did not like her
asking, and were hesitating whether to answer. But he said at last, "She
is no better. She will be worse before she is better. You see," he added,
"that I haven't been able to arrest the disorder in its first stage. We
must hope for what can be done now, in the second."

She had gathered from the half jocose ease with which he had listened to
Mrs. Maynard's account of herself, and to her own report, an
encouragement which now fell to the ground "Yes," she assented, in her
despair, "that is the only hope."

He sat beside the table in the hotel parlor, where they found themselves
alone for the moment, and drubbed upon it with an absent look. "Have you
sent for her husband?" he inquired, returning to himself.

"Yes; Mr. Libby telegraphed the evening we saw you."

"That's good," said Dr. Mulbridge, with comfortable approval; and he rose
to go away.

Grace impulsively detained him. "I--won't--ask you whether you consider
Mrs. Maynard's case a serious one, if you object to my doing so."