ed, "just before
you came in."

"_We?_" he repeated, turning toward Susan once more. After a pause, he
offered me his hand--and drew it back.

"You don't shake hands with me," he said.

"I am waiting, Rothsay, until I know that we are the same firm friends
as ever."

For the third time he looked at Susan.

"Will _you_ shake hands?" he asked.

She gave him her hand cordially. "May I stay here?" she said, addressing
herself to me.

In my situation at that moment, I understood the generous purpose that
animated her. But she had suffered enough already--I led her gently to
the door. "It will be better," I whispered, "if you will wait downstairs
in the library." She hesitated. "What will they say in the house?" she
objected, thinking of the servants and of the humble position which she
was still supposed to occupy. "It matters nothing what they say, now." I
told her. She left us.

"There seems to be some private understanding between you," Rothsay
said, when we were alone.

"You shall hear what it is," I answered. "But I must beg you to excuse
me if I speak first of myself."

"Are you alluding to your health?"

"Yes."

"Quite needless, Lepel. I met your doctor this morning. I know that a
council of physicians decided you would die before the year was out."

He paused there.

"And they proved to be wrong," I added.

"They might have proved to be right," Rothsay rejoined, "but for the
accident which spilled your medicine and the despair of yourself which
decided you on taking no more."

I could hardly believe that I understood him. "Do you assert," I said,
"that my medicine would have killed me, if I had taken the rest of it?"

"I have no doubt that it would."

"Will you explain what you mean?"

"Let me have your explanation first. I was not prepared to find Susan in
your room. I was surprised to see traces of tears in her face. Something
has happened in my absence. Am I concerned in it?"

"You are."

I said it quietly--in full possession of myself. The trial of fortitude
through which I had already passed seemed to have blunted my customary
sense of feeling. I approached the disclosure which I was now bound to
make with steady resolution, resigned to the worst that could happen
when the truth was known.

"Do you remember the time," I resumed, "when I was so eager to serve you
that I proposed to make Susan your wife by making her rich?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember asking me if I was thinking of