Ewing
expressed anxiety about her health, she laughed it off, and made some
excuse, such as the badness of the roads, or some Christmas work which
she was anxious to finish. However, at last Mrs. Ewing's concern grew so
evident that Doctor Gordon at dinner one day gave what seemed a
plausible reason for Clemency remaining indoors. "If you will have it,
Clara," he said, "Clemency has a slight pain in her side, and pleurisy
and pneumonia are all about, and I told her that she had better take no
chances, and the weather has been raw."

Mrs. Ewing turned quite white. "Oh, Tom," she murmured, "why didn't you
tell me?"

"I did not tell you, Clara dear, because you would immediately have had
the child in a galloping consumption, and it is really nothing at all. I
only want to be on the safe side."

"It is a very little pain, mother dear," said Clemency. When Clemency
spoke to Mrs. Ewing, her voice had a singing quality. At such times,
although the young man's very soul was possessed of the mother, he could
not help viewing the daughter with favor. But he was puzzled about the
pleurisy. The girl seemed to him entirely well, although she was losing
a little of her warm color from staying indoors. Still, after all, a
pain is as invisible as a spirit. Her friend, Annie Lipton, spent a few
days with her, and then James saw very little of Clemency. The two girls
sat together in Clemency's room, and only the Lord of innocence and
ignorance knew what they talked about. They talked a great deal. James,
whenever he was in the house, was conscious of the distant murmur of
their sweet young voices, although he could not distinguish a word.
Annie Lipton was a prettier girl than Clemency, though without her
personal charm. Her beauty seemed to abash her, and make her indignant.
She was a girl who should have been a nun, and viewed love and lovers
from behind iron bars. She treated James with exceeding coolness.

"Annie Lipton is an anomaly," Doctor Gordon remarked once over his
after-dinner pipe, when they sat in the study listening to the feminine
murmur on the other side of the wall. It sounded like the gentle ripple
of a summer sea.

"Why?" returned James.

"She defies her sex," replied Doctor Gordon, "and still there is nothing
mannish about her. She is a woman angry and ashamed at her womanhood.
If she ever marries, it will be at the cost of a terrible mental
struggle. There are women-haters among men, and there are a very few-