"I mean a lady friend?" said the doctor.

"Yes," said Faith again. She knew now what the doctor meant, but she
did not feel inclined to enter into the subject or to enlighten him at
all. Then too Mr. Linden might have more friends than _one_ abroad!--It
flashed upon her like a curious illumination.

"Then the story is true?" said the doctor.

"I don't know, sir," said Faith in some distress. "I know nothing about
it."

"But you don't know that it is not true?" said he looking at her.

"No, sir. I don't know."

Dr. Harrison's further questions and remarks were cut short by the
entrance of the very person referred to; who coming up with his usual
light, alert step, held out his hand first of all to the questioner.

"Good evening, doctor!--how do you do again? Miss Faith, may I take you
away from these beauties?" And the released hand was offered to her.
She put hers in it very willingly but very silently; Faith dared not
say a word to him about the Rhododendrons or about anything else.

"Ah, you have two hands again," said Dr. Harrison, "and you turn it
against me!"

"Not that fact--" Mr. Linden said as he went off. And then slackening
his step, he talked or made Faith talk--and laugh--every inch of the
way into the room where all the rest were clustered ready for blind
man's buff. It was a triumph of his skill,--or of his power,--for she
had left the Rhododendrons in a mood most shy and quiet, and disposed
to keep so. Dr. Harrison had not followed them, but soon made his
entrance upon the company by another door.

"What is going on? or off, Mrs. Stoutenburgh?" he whispered to that
lady.

"Why the bandage is going on, and we're going off," said she laughing.
"Will you be blinded first, doctor?"

"Blind man's buff!" said the doctor shrugging his shoulders comically.
"Barbarous! I would rather 'go off' too--but anything to please you,
Mrs. Stoutenburgh. A game to see how much a man without his five senses
can do against other people who have them." But the doctor gallantly
stepped up to Mrs. Somers.

"I represent the forlorn hope for the evening, aunt Ellen. Has anybody
volunteered to be the first victim?"

"You are the last person in the room that ought to volunteer," said
Mrs. Somers,--"however, blindness is proverbial in some cases. Miss
Essie will bandage your eyes, Julius--and use her own for you in the
meanwhile, I dare say. Miss Essie, here is a candidate."

"Not for Miss Essie's good offices!" s