een talking it over in the front parlour, Mr. Batholommey and
I."

The doctor darted a withering look at her over his spectacles.

"I suggest sending out a card----" she purred, "just a neat card" (here
she measured off an imaginary card with her fingers), "saying that owing
to the bereavement in the family the wedding has been indefinitely
postponed. Of course," she sighed, "it isn't exactly true."

"Won't take place at all," exploded the doctor, going on at once with
his reading.

"Evidently not," said Mrs. Batholommey, "but if the whole matter
looks very strange to _me_--How is it going to look to other
people--especially when we haven't any--any _rational_ explanation--as
yet? We must get out of it in _some_ fashion. I'm sure I don't know how
else we can explain--I don't like telling anything that isn't
true--but--there _was_ to be a wedding." Mrs. Batholommey waved her
right hand. "There _isn't_ to be any wedding," she waved her left hand.
"At least, Frederik isn't to be in it--and one must account for it
_somehow_?"

"Whose business is it?" fired the doctor, in a voice that made Mrs.
Batholommey start like a frightened rabbit.

For one moment his eyes peered fiercely at her under their shaggy brows,
and then he returned to his narrative.

"Nobody's at all," she made great haste to say. "Nobody's at
all--nobody's at all, of course. But Kathrien's position is certainly
unusual; and the strangest part of it is--she doesn't appear to feel her
situation. She's sitting alone in the library seemingly placid and
happy. She acts as if a weight were off her mind. But the main point
I've been arguing is this: Should the card we're going to send out have
a narrow black border, or not?"

She turned toward the doctor and indicated with her fingers the width of
black border that seemed to her to fit the occasion. But her trouble was
entirely wasted.

Dr. McPherson was once more engrossed in his writing, and had forgotten
her existence.

"Well, Doctor," she said in an injured tone, "you don't appear to be
interested. You don't even answer!"

"I couldn't," snapped Dr. McPherson. "I didn't know whether you were
talking _again_ or _still_."

Mrs. Batholommey was hurt, and she showed it in the reproachful look she
cast at the doctor's unassailable, uninterested back.

"Oh, of course," she said, "all these little matters sound trivial to
you. But men like you couldn't look after the workings of the _next_
world, if o