d a little while for her to go on, and then he said, "Well, let
us hear."

"I wish to consult with you," she broke out, and again she came to a
sudden pause; and as she looked into his vigilant face, in which she was
not sure there was not a hovering derision, she could not continue.
She felt that she ought to gather courage from the fact that he had not
started, or done anything positively disagreeable when she had asked for
a consultation; but she could not, and it did not avail her to
reflect that she was rendering herself liable to all conceivable
misconstruction,--that she was behaving childishly, with every
appearance of behaving guiltily.

He came to her aid again, in a blunt fashion, neither kind nor unkind,
but simply common sense. "What is the matter?"

"What is the matter?" she repeated.

"Yes. What are the symptoms? Where and how are, you sick?"

"I am not sick," she cried. They stared at each other in reciprocal
amazement and mystification.

"Then excuse me if I ask you what you wish me to do?"

"Oh!" said Grace, realizing his natural error, with a flush. "It is
n't in regard to myself that I wish to consult with you. It's another
person--a friend"--

"Well," said Dr. Mulbridge, laughing, with the impatience of a physician
used to making short cuts through the elaborate and reluctant statements
of ladies seeking advice, "what is the matter with your friend?"

"She has been an invalid for some time," replied Grace. The laugh, which
had its edge of patronage and conceit, stung her into self-possession
again, and she briefly gave the points of Mrs. Maynard's case, with the
recent accident and the symptoms developed during the night. He listened
attentively, nodding his head at times, and now and then glancing
sharply at her, as one might at a surprisingly intelligent child.

"I must see her," he said decidedly, when she came to an end. "I
will see her as soon as possible. I will come over to Jocelyn's this
afternoon,--as soon as I can get my dinner, in fact."

There was such a tone of dismissal in his words that she rose, and he
promptly followed her example. She stood hesitating a moment. Then, "I
don't know whether you understood that I wish merely to consult with
you," she said; "that I don't wish to relinquish the case to you"--

"Relinquish the case--consult"--Dr. Mulbridge stared at her. "No, I
don't understand. What do you mean by not relinquishing the case? If
there is some one else in at