iked dogs;
and this ugly brute's behaviour, so he told himself, annoyed him very
much.

Span got up and shook himself, almost as if he had been asleep.

Panton bent down. "Span," he said warningly, "be a good dog and behave
yourself! Remember what happened to you after the poor lunatic lady went
away."

And Span looked up with that peculiar, thoughtful look which dogs
sometimes have of understanding everything which is being said to them.

Span had been beaten--a very rare experience for him--after the mad lady
had left the doctor's house. But whether he understood or not the exact
reference to that odious episode in his happy past life, there was no
doubt that Span did understand that his master regarded him as being in
disgrace; and it was a very subdued dog that walked sedately into the
hall where most of the party were gathered together ready to greet the
new-comer.

Miss Farrow was particularly cordial, and so was Helen Brabazon. She and
Dr. Panton had become real friends during Mrs. Varick's illness, and
they had been at one in their affection for, and admiration of, Lionel
Varick during that piteous time. To the doctor (though he would not have
admitted it, even to himself, for the world) there had been something
very repugnant about the dying woman. Though still young in years, she
might have been any age; and she was so fretful and so selfish, hardly
allowing her husband out of her sight, while utterly devoted to him, of
course, in her queer, egoistic way--and to Miss Brabazon, her kind new
friend. The doctor had soon realized that it was the pity which is akin
to love which had made Helen become so attached to poor Milly
Varick--intense pity for the unhappy soul who was going to lose her
new-found happiness. Milly's pathetic cry: "I never had a girl friend
before. You can't think how happy it makes me!" had touched Helen to the
heart.

Standing there, in that noble old room hung with some beautiful
tapestries forming a perfect background to the life and colour which was
now filling it, Panton was surprised to find how vividly those memories
of last autumn came surging back to him. It must be owing to this
meeting with Miss Brabazon--this reunion with the two people with whom
he had gone through an experience which, though it so often befalls a
kind and sympathetic doctor, yet never loses its poignancy--that he was
thinking now so intensely of poor Mrs. Varick.

It was Helen Brabazon who had introduced