it for you?" asked the incorrigible doctor. "'Read it, and
be ashamed of yourself'--That was what you had in your mind, isn't it?
Anything to please you, my dear." He put on his spectacles, read the
letter, and handed it back to Emily with an impenetrable countenance.
"What do you think of my new spectacles?" he asked, as he took the
glasses off his nose. "In the experience of thirty years, I have had
three grateful patients." He put the spectacles back in the case. "This
comes from the third. Very gratifying--very gratifying."

Emily's sense of humor was not the uppermost sense in her at that
moment. She pointed with a peremptory forefinger to Mrs. Rook's letter.
"Have you nothing to say about this?"

The doctor had so little to say about it that he was able to express
himself in one word:

"Humbug!"

He took his hat--nodded kindly to Emily--and hurried away to feverish
pulses waiting to be felt, and to furred tongues that were ashamed to
show themselves.

CHAPTER XXXI. MOIRA.

When Alban presented himself the next morning, the hours of the night
had exercised their tranquilizing influence over Emily. She remembered
sorrowfully how Doctor Allday had disturbed her belief in the man who
loved her; no feeling of irritation remained. Alban noticed that her
manner was unusually subdued; she received him with her customary grace,
but not with her customary smile.

"Are you not well?" he asked.

"I am a little out of spirits," she replied. "A disappointment--that is
all."

He waited a moment, apparently in the expectation that she might tell
him what the disappointment was. She remained silent, and she looked
away from him. Was he in any way answerable for the depression of
spirits to which she alluded? The doubt occurred to him--but he said
nothing.

"I suppose you have received my letter?" she resumed.

"I have come here to thank you for your letter."

"It was my duty to tell you of Sir Jervis's illness; I deserve no
thanks."

"You have written to me so kindly," Alban reminded her; "you have
referred to our difference of opinion, the last time I was here, so
gently and so forgivingly--"

"If I had written a little later," she interposed, "the tone of my
letter might have been less agreeable to you. I happened to send it to
the post, before I received a visit from a friend of yours--a friend who
had something to say to me after consulting with you."

"Do you mean Doctor Allday?"

"Yes."

"What