ere freely talked about,--of
those darker tendencies which were hinted of in whispers? To all this
talk, so far as it reached him, he was supremely indifferent, not only
with the indifference which all gentlemen feel to the gossip of their
inferiors, but with a charitable calmness which did not wonder or blame.
He knew that his position was not simply a difficult, but an impossible
one, and schooled himself to bear his destiny as well as he might, and
report himself only at Headquarters.

He had grown gentle under this discipline. His hair was just beginning
to be touched with silver, and his expression was that of habitual
sadness and anxiety. He had no counsellor, as we have seen, to turn to,
who did not know either too much or too little. He had no heart to rest
upon and into which he might unburden himself of the secrets and the
sorrows that were aching in his own breast. Yet he had not allowed
himself to run to waste in the long time since he was left alone to his
trials and fears. He had resisted the seductions which always beset
solitary men with restless brains overwrought by depressing agencies. He
disguised no misery to himself with the lying delusion of wine. He
sought no sleep from narcotics, though he lay with throbbing, wide-open
eyes through all the weary hours of the night.

It was understood between Dudley Veneer and old Doctor Kittredge that
Elsie was a subject of occasional medical observation, on account of
certain mental peculiarities which might end in a permanent affection of
her reason. Beyond this nothing was said, whatever may have been in the
mind of either. But Dudley Veneer had studied Elsie's case in the light
of all the books he could find which might do anything towards explaining
it. As in all cases where men meddle with medical science for a special
purpose, having no previous acquaintance with it, his imagination found
what it wanted in the books he read, and adjusted it to the facts before
him. So it was he came to cherish those two fancies before alluded to
that the ominous birthmark she had carried from infancy might fade and
become obliterated, and that the age of complete maturity might be
signalized by an entire change in her physical and mental state. He held
these vague hopes as all of us nurse our only half-believed illusions.
Not for the world would he have questioned his sagacious old medical
friend as to the probability or possibility of their being true. We a