es," she told him. "It is I who understand you now."

"And I am devoutly glad," he made answer, with humble thankfulness.
"And I must ask you, Grizel, why you want to run away from me."

"But you think you know," she retorted smartly. "You think I want to
read my letter again!"

Her cleverness staggered him. "But I am right, am I not, Grizel?"

"No," she said triumphantly, "you are quite wrong. Oh, if you knew how
wrong you are!" And having thus again unhorsed him, she made her
excuses to Ailie and slipped away. Dr. Gemmell, who was present and
had been watching her narrowly, misread the flush on her face and her
restless desire to be gone.

"Is there anything between those two, do you think?" Mrs. McLean had
said in a twitter to him while Tommy and Grizel were talking, and he
had answered No almost sharply.

"People are beginning to think there is," she said in self-defence.

"They are mistaken," he told her curtly, and it was about this time
that Grizel left. David followed her to her home soon afterwards, and
Maggy Ann, who answered his summons, did not accompany him upstairs.
He was in the house daily, and she left him to find Grizel for
himself. He opened the parlour door almost as he knocked, and she was
there, but had not heard him. He stopped short, like one who had
blundered unawares on what was not for him.

She was on her knees on the hearth-rug, with her head buried in what
had been Dr. McQueen's chair. Ragged had been the seat of it on the
day when she first went to live with him, but very early on the
following morning, or, to be precise, five minutes after daybreak, he
had risen to see if there were burglars in the parlour, and behold, it
was his grateful little maid repadding the old arm-chair. How a
situation repeats itself! Without disturbing her, the old doctor had
slipped away with a full heart. It was what the young doctor did now.

But the situation was not quite the same. She had been bubbling over
with glee then; she was sobbing now. David could not know that it was
a sob of joy; he knew only that he had never seen her crying before,
and that it was the letter in her hands that had brought tears at last
to those once tranquil and steadfast eyes.

In an odd conversation which had once taken place in that room between
the two doctors, Gemmell had said: "But the time may come without my
knowing it." And McQueen's reply was: "I don't think so, for she is so
open; but I'll tell you this, Da