difficult to know. Yet how
kind he had been to her and careful of her child! for that she would
always be grateful. But for him, anything might have happened! Strange
fellow!--why was he so antagonistic to people when his profession made
him a ministering angel to humanity? Joyce felt her head aching so
violently at this stage that she abandoned the puzzle of Captain
Dalton's nature and indulged in ecstasies over the thought of her baby's
recovery. It made her so happy that, when her husband entered with the
doctor, she flung her arms about his neck and apologised for her
exhibition of bad temper. "I was horrible to you, Ray. Do forgive me,"
sounded very sweet in her husband's ears. What the doctor thought was of
no importance to her.

Meredith mumbled transports of joy on her lips and was beside himself
with anxiety that she should be feverish. He plied her with questions in
his solicitude, and stood by in sulky jealousy while the doctor made his
professional examination of her lungs and heart.

Joyce said "ninety-nine" many times obediently, and was like a child in
her unconsciousness of self. One all-absorbing thought occupied her
mind, and that was her baby's well-being.

"Isn't Captain Dalton an angel?" she cried when the examination was over
and her lungs pronounced in perfect order. "I shall love him for ever
after his kindness to us; only, he won't let me. He has no use, he says,
for friends!"

Dalton smiled grimly as he put away his stethoscope. "Have you ever
heard of the qualities that go to make a good doctor?" he asked coolly.

"Tell me," she demanded.

"An unerring judgment, nerves of steel, and a heart of stone."

"And have you managed to acquire all three?" she asked playfully.

"The petrifaction of the last-named is quite an old story," he remarked,
as he passed out of the tent.

"You must not talk so much, sweetheart, with a rising temperature,"
Meredith cautioned, fussing over her, while, outside, the trial of a
notorious criminal was suspended till the Magistrate should think fit to
return. "How did Dalton find out that you had fever?" he questioned
suspiciously. "Did you send for him?"

"Oh, no. He brought me news of Baby and gave me my tea. Isn't he queer?
Not half so bad as people make him out to be. Oh!--and I was so
overjoyed and excited that I kissed his hand. I wonder what he thought
of my foolishness?" and she laughed at the joke; but her husband seemed
to have lost his sense of h