e, and before it a rug was spread. At
one side there was a huge mahogany four-post bedstead, and there,
propped up by the pillows, lay the noblest-looking woman that
Carmichael had ever seen.

She was dressed in some clinging stuff of soft black, with a diamond
at her breast, and a deep-red cloak thrown over her feet. She must
have been past middle age, for her thick, brown hair was already
touched with silver, and one lock of snow-white lay above her
forehead. But her face was one of those which time enriches; fearless
and tender and high-spirited, a speaking face in which the dark-lashed
grey eyes were like words of wonder and the sensitive mouth like a
clear song. She looked at the young doctor and held out her hand to
him.

"I am glad to see you," she said, in her low, pure voice, "very glad!
You are Roger Carmichael's son. Oh, I am glad to see you indeed."

"You are very kind," he answered, "and I am glad also to be of any
service to you, though I do not yet know who you are."

The Baron was bending over the fire rearranging the logs on the
andirons. He looked up sharply and spoke in his strong nasal tone.

"_Pardon! Madame la Baronne de Mortemer, j'ai l'honneur de vous
presenter Monsieur le Docteur Carmichael._"

The accent on the "doctor" was marked. A slight shadow came upon the
lady's face. She answered, quietly:

"Yes, I know. The doctor has come to see me because I was ill. We will
talk of that in a moment. But first I want to tell him who I am--and
by another name. Dr. Carmichael, did your father ever speak to you of
Jean Gordon?"

"Why, yes," he said, after an instant of thought, "it comes back to me
now quite clearly. She was the young girl to whom he taught Latin when
he first came here as a college instructor. He was very fond of her.
There was one of her books in his library--I have it now--a little
volume of Horace, with a few translations in verse written on the
fly-leaves, and her name on the title-page--Jean Gordon. My father
wrote under that, 'My best pupil, who left her lessons unfinished.'
He was very fond of the book, and so I kept it when he died."

The lady's eyes grew moist, but the tears did not fall. They trembled
in her voice.

"I was that Jean Gordon--a girl of fifteen--your father was the best
man I ever knew. You look like him, but he was handsomer than you. Ah,
no, I was not his best pupil, but his most wilful and ungrateful one.
Did he never tell you of my running away--o