"

"But I'm going to do wonderful things in the city."

"Wonderful things--poor little girl----"

As he brought his eyes back from the fire to her face, he seemed to
bring his thoughts back from an uneasy reverie.

"You ought," he said, "to marry----"

The color flamed into the girl's cheeks. "Mother was always saying that,
in those last days. But I hated to have her; it seemed so dreadful to
talk of marriage--without love. I know she didn't mean it that way, poor
darling! She married for love and her life was such a failure. But I
couldn't--not just to get married, could I--not just to have some one
take care of me?"

He stood up, and thrust his hands in his pockets. "No," he agreed
bluffly, "you couldn't, of course."

"And there's never been any one in love with me," was her naive
confession, "and I've never been in love, not really----"

He was looking down at her with smiling eyes. "There's plenty of time."

"Yes--that's what I always told mother--but she dreaded to think of
me--alone."

The eager, dying woman had said the same thing to the doctor, and it had
seemed to him, sometimes, that her burning eyes had begged of him a
favor which he could not grant.

For there had always been--Diana!

He straightened his shoulders. "I'm going to ask you to stay here," he
said, "instead of going to the city. I haven't any real right to keep
you, for I'm not legally your guardian, but I promised your mother to
look after you. I can find work for you. We need some one at the
sanatorium to look after the office----"

For a moment she set her will against his. "But I'd rather go to the
city."

He put his strong hands on her shoulders. "Little child, look at me," he
said, and when she flashed up at him a startled glance, he went on,
gently, "Your mother wanted me to take care of you--to keep you from
harm. In the city you'll be too far away. I want you to stay here. Will
you?"

And presently she whispered, "I will stay."

Outside the rain was rushing and the wind was blowing, and plain little
Miss Matthews battled with the storm. Miss Matthews, who, every day in
the year, taught a class of tumultuous children, and whose life dealt
always with the commonplace. And it was plain little Miss Matthews who,
having weathered the storm and climbed the winding stairs, came in,
rain-coated and soft-hatted, to find by the fire the doctor drawing on
his gloves and Bettina hovering about him like a gold-tipped butterfly.