I think not. I am neglecting my business. And I, of all men in
the world, have least right to loiter about this old house, to look in
on its home-life or on you."

Kitty gave him a sharp glance, as though some sudden emergency was
clear before her which her tact failed to meet. She was folding the
bits of muslin at which she had been sewing in a basket: she finished
slowly, put the basket away, and sat down at the table, with her elbow
on it and her chin on her hand, her gray eyes suggesting a deeper and
unspoken meaning to her words: "But for my plan?"

"Ah! to be sure! You want advice?" seating himself comfortably. Her
confusion was a pretty thing to watch, the red creeping up her neck
into her face, blotting out its delicate tints, the uncertain glances,
the full bitten lip. Doctor McCall quite forgot his own trouble in the
keen pleasure of the sight.

"Perhaps--You do not quite understand my position here? Mr. Guinness
is not my own father."

"No, I knew that."

"But you cannot know what he has been to me: _I_ never knew until the
last few days."

"Why within these few days, Miss Vogdes?"

"Because I saw you and Maria: I saw what love was. I began to think
about it. I never have loved anybody but him," she went on headlong,
utterly blind to all inferences. "There's a thing I can do for him,
Doctor McCall, before I marry Mr. Muller, and I must do it. It will
make his old age happier than any other part of his life has been."

McCall nodded, leaning forward. It was nothing but an imprudent girl
dragging out her secrets before a stranger; nothing but a heated face,
wet eyes, a sweet milky breath; but no tragedy he had ever seen on the
stage had moved him so uncontrollably--no, not any crisis in his own
life--with such delicious, inexplicable emotion.

"Well, what is it you can do?" after waiting for her to go on.

There was a moment's silence.

"My father," said Kitty, "had once a great trouble. It has made an old
man of him before his time. I find that I can take it from him."
She looked up at him with this. Now, there was a certain shrewd
penetration under the softness of Kitty's eyes. Noting it, McCall
instantly lost sight of her beauty and tears. He returned her look
coolly.

"What was his trouble?"

"Mr. Guinness had a son. He has believed him to be dead for years: I
know that he is not dead."

Doctor McCall waited, with her eyes still upon him. "Well?" he said,
attentive.

"And then," pushin