o, ma'am. I vow here, as I am, I hope, a gentleman, that I
shall go home to-day, and on foot."

"You would kill yourself," she told him.

"I might kill myself for less, and yet be justified."

She looked her despair of him. "What must I do to make you reasonable?"

"Set me the example by being reasonable yourself, and let there be
no more of this wild talk of leaving me the very moment you are come.
Leduc, a chair for Mistress Winthrop!" he commanded, as though chairs
abounded in a garden nook. But Leduc, the diplomat, had effaced himself.

She laughed at his grand air, and, herself, drew forward the stool that
had been Leduc's, and sat down. Satisfied, Mr. Caryll made her a bow,
and seated himself sideways on his long chair, so that he faced her. She
begged that he would dispose himself more comfortably; but he scorned
the very notion.

"Unaided I walked here from the house," he informed her with a boastful
air. "I had need to begin to feel my feet again. You are pampering me
here, and to pamper an invalid is bad; it keeps him an invalid. Now I am
an invalid no longer."

"But the doctor--" she began.

"The doctor, ma'am, is disposed of already," he assured her. "Very
definitely disposed of. Ask Leduc. He will tell you."

"Not a doubt of that," she answered. "Leduc talks too much."

"You have a spite against him for the information he gave me on the
score of how and by whom I was nursed. So have I. Because he did not
tell me before, and because when he told me he would not tell me enough.
He has no eyes, this Leduc. He is a dolt, who only sees the half of what
happens, and only remembers the half of what he has seen."

"I am sure of it," said she.

He looked surprised an instant. Then he laughed. "I am glad that we
agree."

"But you have yet to learn the cause. Had this Leduc used his eyes or
his ears to better purpose, he had been able to tell you something of
the extent to which I am in your debt."

"Ah?" said he, mystified. Then: "The news will be none the less welcome
from your lips, ma'am," said he. "Is it that you are interested in the
ravings of delirium, and welcomed the opportunity of observing them at
first hand? I hope I raved engagingly, if so be that I did rave. Would
it, perchance, be of a lady that I talked in my fevered wanderings?--of
a lady pale as a lenten rose, with soft brown eyes, and lips that--"

"Your guesses are all wild," she checked him. "My debt is of a more real
kind. It c