Munsey's Magazine/Volume 79/Issue 4/The Marquis of Carabas

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

 

The Marquis of Carabas

 

THE STRANGE STORY OF TWO YOUNG DOCTORS

 

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

 

PERHAPS you remember the story of “Puss in Boots”—how the talented and resolute cat caught game in the woods and presented it to the king as the gift of his master, the Marquis of Carabas. Then the cat advised his master to bathe in the river, and, as the king's coach rolled past, he set up a great shout that the Marquis of Carabas was drowning, and that his fine clothes had been stolen by thieves. The king stopped, ordered new clothes for the marquis, and took him into the royal coach. While they drove on, the cat ran ahead, and bullied the workers in the fields into saying that all the land belonged to Carabas.

There is more in the story, but the chief thing is that the cat secured for his master a fine castle and estate, and the hand of a beautiful princess. And, mind you, the young man was nothing on earth but the youngest son of a poor miller, the Marquis of Carabas being simply an invention of the clever animal's.

Well, there are people alive to-day who have the same ambition as that devoted cat—people who try to make a Marquis of Carabas out of some ordinary young man. Unfortunately, they do not always succeed. I know of a case in point.

There appeared one day in a certain town in Westchester a new doctor, arriving unknown and without introduction in the midst of a quite sufficient supply of well established practitioners. It was a prosperous town, but not a growing one. There seemed to be nothing for a new doctor to do, unless he set to work to create a demand for his services—a thing that doctors can't very well do. He put out his sign, however, on his tidy little house—“Noel Hunter, M.D.”—sat down behind his sign, and waited.

Now and then he was seen out on his veranda, looking at the barometer, or strolling out to the garage, where an energetic little car ate its head off in idleness. Whoever saw him was favorably impressed, because he was a charming young fellow, slender, tall, and dark, with an honest, good-humored face and very fine black eyes. Indeed, he was almost too handsome for a doctor. It was cruel to think of his being called out at night in all weathers, of having hurried and inadequate meals and too little sleep, of losing his endearing youth in arduous and exhausting toil.

Well, to be sure, that was not happening. He had ample time for sleep, and, providing he was able to pay, there was nothing to prevent his eating all day. And that, too, was a pity and a waste, because obviously he must be longing to give his medical services, and must have studied a long time to prepare himself. The people who lived on the same street felt embarrassed and a little guilty when they caught sight of Noel Hunter, M.D., all ready to be a doctor, but wanted by no one.

II

One day there came to Mr. Miles, the rector of the parish, an affable little lady, dressed in a conservative style suited to her years—which were fifty-five or so—and presenting a letter from a clergyman in Brooklyn. The letter gave information that the bearer was Mrs. Edwin Carew, “whom we are more than sorry to lose, because of her tact and sympathy and her invaluable assistance in parish work.”

There was more of this, too, so that Mr. Miles blushed a little in deference to Mrs. Edwin Carew as he read it. He welcomed her very cordially. He assured her that she would find plenty of opportunities for using her tact and sympathy and for giving her invaluable assistance in parish work. He was so favorably impressed by the lady that he sent at once for Mrs. Miles, and Mrs. Miles was instantly charmed.

“The Needlework Guild is meeting now,” said she. “If you would care to come in and meet some of the ladies—”

Mrs. Carew accepted graciously, was brought before this gathering of her peers, and was judged and found worthy. She seemed to be the nicest sort of little body, cheerful and kindly and gentle, and though she was far too well bred to boast, it was obvious that she was a person of some social importance. She had traveled; she knew the world; she knew what was what; she was an acquisition.

“Are you going to be here permanently, Mrs. Carew?” asked the august and resplendent Mrs. Lorrimer.

“I hope so,” she answered, smiling. “I'm beginning to be quite fond of your pretty little town; but it all depends on my nephew. You see, he's used to life in a large city, and I'm afraid—Still, I hope he'll like it.”

“Oh! Your nephew?” said Mrs. Lorrimer encouragingly.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Carew. “Perhaps I did wrong in persuading him to leave the city and come here, where it's so—so much quieter; but I feel sure that after he's used to it, it will really do him good. He had so many friends in the city, and so many, many engagements, that it interfered with his work; and though I know we must make allowances for young people, still I can't bear the idea of his talent being wasted.”

“Oh! His talent?” said Mrs. Lorrimer.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Carew. “He's a physician. I think he has already 'hung out his shingle,' as they say—Noel Hunter. Of course, he doesn't expect to do much practicing yet. I want him to rest first, and to get accustomed to the place.”

As if by magic, Dr. Hunter was transformed by those words from an object of pity into a very interesting young man. Professionally his life was not altered, but the very next week he was invited to a little dance; and every one who saw him there was irresistibly urged to invite him to something else. Ladies came to call upon Mrs. Carew, to sing the praises of her charming nephew. He was forever going out, or getting ready to go out, and he seemed to be very happy about it.

From the window Mrs. Carew would watch him drive off in his little closed coupé, so useful for a doctor, who must be abroad in all weathers. Much as she admired his resplendent appearance, and rejoiced in his popularity, she did wish that now and then he might be summoned to something less cheerful than a party.

That never happened. The more he was danced with and flirted with, the more did it seem tactless and ill-bred to mention one's sordid ailments to him. It was unthinkable to call in one's dancing partner and confess to a bilious headache from too much pastry. No one could see him as a doctor.

He seemed not at all downcast by this. Indeed, Mrs. Carew sometimes imagined that he had forgotten all about being a doctor.

“Don't you think you ought to read your medical books now and then, Noel?” she suggested. “Just to—to keep up?”

“Oh, no!” he replied cheerfully. “I'm not likely to forget all that stuff that was so much trouble to learn. Don't worry!”

“But you mustn't lose interest, Noel,” she persisted.

He flushed a little, for he had at the moment two preoccupations which were nearer to his heart than the theory and practice of medicine. The first of these was Nesta Lorrimer, and the second was her brother's hydroplane. They merged very well, because Nesta was frequently in the vicinity of the hydroplane, so that they could both be studied together.

It was unfortunate that Noel did not mention this to his aunt, because she would have approved heartily of one of those interests; but he knew that aunts were extremely likely to worry about flying. He was very fond of her, and didn't want to worry her; so the poor lady knew nothing.

Mrs. Lorrimer knew, however.

“Alan,” she said to her son, “don't you think you encourage that young Dr. Hunter a little too much?”

She spoke moderately, because she had a great respect for her son. He was a level-headed, intelligent young fellow, who used such things as hydroplanes only for diversion, and never neglected his business. He was not handsome, like his sister, but he didn't need to be. He was a remarkably successful lawyer for his twenty-seven years, and he was a good-humored, quick-witted, tolerant fellow whom every one was obliged to like.

“Encourage him?” he repeated, with a smile. “That's a queer way to put it. I'd like to think I encouraged any one. But why? What's wrong with him?”

“He doesn't seem to get on very well,” said Mrs. Lorrimer.

“He's mistaken his métier,” her son replied casually. “But I like him very much. Plenty of nerve and grit. As a pilot—”

“Ah!” Mrs. Lorrimer interrupted. “I dare say; but as a brother-in-law?”

Alan was astounded, as brothers always are.

“What?” he exclaimed. “You don't mean that Nesta—impossible!”

“I'm afraid she's growing fond of him, Alan.”

He reflected in silence for some time, and then he said:

“Well, after all, she might do worse.”

“That's not the question,” replied his mother, a little indignant. “I think she might do very much better.”

“I don't know. He's a very decent fellow. Personally—”

“Oh, every one likes him!” she interrupted impatiently; “and every one seems to have forgotten that we don't know anything at all about him. Mrs. Carew is very nice, of course; but after all, they've only been here a few months. They don't seem at all well off, and yet he doesn't appear to be worried about not having the least sign of a practice. I can't help thinking—”

She paused significantly.

“What can't you help thinking?” inquired her son, with a smile. “That poor Hunter has some sinister secret in his past?”

“No,” said she. “No, not that. I don't like to say it, but I've sometimes thought he might be nothing but an adventurer, who came here to find a wife with money.”

“Mother!” exclaimed Alan, quite shocked. “That's not like you!”

But his trained and disciplined brain refused to remain shocked. He was obliged to admit that the qualities for which he admired Hunter—courage and daring and steady nerves—did not always signify moral excellence. An adventurer might very well possess them; and about Hunter's former life, about his home life, he knew absolutely nothing.

“Very well!” he said to himself. “In justice to Nesta, and in justice to Hunter as well, it's my business to find out.”

The thing was to take him by surprise, to see him at home, off his guard.

III

Alan felt unpleasantly like a spy as he drew near the house that evening. He would have preferred putting Hunter on the stand and cross-examining him. After all, he was a lawyer, not a detective, and to go to a friend's house for the purpose of observing and judging him seemed an unworthy thing to do.

“Still, if he hasn't anything to be ashamed of, he won't care,” he reflected. “If he has, I'd better know it. I'll have to study him carefully for some time.”

He rang the bell, and was amazed at the confusion the sound apparently caused. He had to wait outside for a long time, while furniture was being pushed about, footsteps hurried to and fro, and doors were closed. Then, at last, the door was opened, and he was still more amazed.

No one had ever heard mention of any other members of the household but Mrs. Carew and Hunter. Who, then, was this lovely girl, dark and serious, a little flushed and ruffled, as if from haste, but with the high-held head, the level, unabashed glance, the dignity of a young princess?

Having come expressly to observe, Alan did observe, and he thought this was the most intelligent and charming face he had seen in many a day. The girl was obliged to repeat her question.

“Who is it you want, sir?”

“Sir”—impossible! She didn't speak like a servant, or dress like one, or look like one.

“The doctor in?” he asked.

“No, sir—not at present. If you care to wait—”

He asked for Mrs. Carew, and gave her his name, and she left him in the little sitting room, where he began to walk up and down, very much perplexed. A pretty room, furnished in a very good taste, but shabby. Through the half-open folding doors he could see a dining room of very much the same sort, with the table still laid, as if the diners had just risen. And—the table was laid for three!

“For three!” he said to himself. “And yet there's no guest here. Mrs. Carew and Hunter—and who else?”

There was a light, quick step on the stairs. Turning, he saw the inexplicable girl descending. This was an excellent opportunity to study her, which Alan did not miss. A remarkable girl! Mere prettiness was not a thing that particularly appealed to this young man. He had met dozens of pretty girls without losing his heart. What interested him now was not the fine regularity of her features, but her air of candid and unassuming dignity, and the thoughtful intelligence of her face.

She entered the room to tell him that Mrs. Carew would be down directly.

“Thank you!” said he, and sought desperately for something to say that would keep her there.

Before he could do so, she had gone—only into the dining room, however, where he could still watch her as she cleared off the table. The more he watched, the more impressed and the more puzzled he became. When he caught sight of her hands—strong and beautiful hands, exquisitely tended—he very nearly exclaimed aloud. Three places at the table, and a girl with hands like that playing the servant!

“It's a good thing I came,” he reflected grimly. “There's something here that needs explaining.”

Well, he didn't get much out of Mrs. Carew when she came down. He brought the talk around to the topic of servants. She said that she never had any trouble with them.

“You're fortunate,” he observed.

“Indeed I am!” she replied brightly. “How charming the country is beginning to look now!”

After this, he couldn't very well go on with the subject; but he felt no hesitation in approaching Hunter in a more direct fashion when they were alone.

“That's a very remarkable young woman who opened the door for me,” he said.

His eyes were on the other man's face, and he saw him turn red.

“Yes,” said Hunter. “She—she is.”

But Alan's eyes were still on him, and he was obliged to continue.

“She's—not exactly a servant, you know,” he said. “In fact, she's a sort of—relation. Helps my aunt, you know. She—she is remarkable, Lorrimer, very.”

Alan gave serious attention to this problem. His legal training did not make him disposed to believe everything he heard, though he was too intelligent to go to the other extreme and believe nothing.

What was the explanation? Had Hunter made a misalliance, which he was ashamed of, and wanted to conceal? No—marriage with that girl wouldn't be a misalliance for any one, and she wasn't the sort who would consent to being concealed.

His sister? There was no possible reason for keeping a sister like that hidden. If it was the case that she really was a poor relation kept as a servant to help Mrs. Carew, then it was a very bad case, and the aunt and the nephew might well be ashamed of themselves. Alan believed that they were ashamed, too.

Hunter had mentioned that he was going to take Mrs. Carew to the moving pictures that evening, and Alan decided then and there that he would use that time for further investigations.

“Because, if they're capable of making a drudge of a girl like that,” he said to himself, “Nesta's going to be told. It's the most beastly piece of snobbishness I've ever come across! Evidently she eats with them. No doubt she's one of the family until an outsider appears, and then she's nobody.”

He was a little surprised at the vigor of his indignation. As a rule, he didn't easily become indignant.

“But she's such a remarkable girl,” he explained to himself. “I've never seen any one like her.”

IV

This time, when he returned to the house, Alan did not feel in the least guilty, although he was now coming deliberately in Hunter's absence, and to collect evidence against him. On the contrary, he felt like a knight sallying forth to rescue a lady from duress.

He rang the bell without hesitation, and the girl opened the door. He had a plan. He explained to her that the doctor had invited him to make use of his medical library whenever he wished—which was true—and that he needed to look up fractures for a plaintiff in a damage suit—which was not true. He made his explanation long and markedly polite, and he was pleased to notice that she forgot all that nonsense about saying “sir.” Instead, she preceded him into the library as if it were her own, lighted a lamp, and, going to the bookshelves, brought out two volumes.

“These are on fractures,” she said.

This did not surprise him. She looked like a girl who would know all sorts of things.

“I'll sit here and make a few notes, if you don't mind,” Alan said, for this was part of his plan.

He waited until he heard a door close after her somewhere. He waited a little longer; then he rose. He intended to be awkward, and to pull down a lot of books, making a great deal of noise. Then she would come back and help him to pick them up, and it would be easy enough, in such circumstances, to start a conversation. But—well, if his intention was to make a noise, he did that, certainly, and the girl did come back, in great haste; but it is not possible to believe that it was part of his plan to pull the bookcase over entirely, or that a bronze bust should fall and hit him on the side of the face.

“I'm very sorry,” he said earnestly. “I don't know how I came to be so clumsy. I—really I'm very sorry.”

“So am I,” said she. “Let's see!”

To his amazement, she took his chin in fingers surprisingly strong, and turned his face toward the light.

“You'd better come into the office,” she said.

“It's nothing, thanks,” he began, but she had already vanished through the door, and he felt obliged to follow.

He said nothing at all while she washed and dressed the trifling wound, but he watched her moving about the bright, glittering little room, he noted her precision, her deftness, her familiarity—and he tried to draw conclusions.

“You're a trained nurse!” he suddenly exclaimed.

She turned toward him, and for the first time he saw her smile.

“No, Mr. Lorrimer, I'm not,” she said. “Now I think you'll do very nicely.”

It was a tone of polite dismissal, but he did not intend to go.

“I'll help you first to repair the damage I did,” he said.

She replied that he needn't.

He said that he wanted to, and must; and because he was just the sort of young man he was, and because she had the intelligence to see it, she admitted him then and there to a sort of friendship. After the bookcase was set upright again, and all the books restored to order, they sat down, one on either side of the library table, in the most natural way in the world.

“You'd make a wonderfully good nurse,” he observed.

“I'm afraid not,” she answered, smiling again. “I shouldn't like it at all!”

“But you seem to know a good deal about that sort of thing,” he went on. “It must interest you.”

She made no reply, and for a moment he feared she had thought him unduly curious—impertinent, perhaps; but there was no sign of displeasure in her face. She was looking thoughtfully before her, grave, serene, almost as if she had not heard him. Suddenly he fancied he understood.

“Of course!” he said to himself. “She's in love with Hunter, and naturally she takes an interest in his work. That's why she's here, filling a servant's place, simply so that she can be near him!”

There was no reason why this should make him indignant, yet, instead of being touched by the idea of such devotion, he was angry and disappointed.

“I wonder what Mrs. Carew thinks of it!” he pursued. “She probably thinks that this girl isn't good enough for her precious Noel. She would object to such a marriage; or perhaps she doesn't know what the girl is. Perhaps he doesn't know, either. I may be the only one who has guessed her secret.”

Then it occurred to him that he was drawing conclusions from very insubstantial premises, also that he was forgetting the object for which he had come, and that his silence might not be impressing her favorably. Looking at her again, he was forced to the unwelcome conclusion that she didn't care whether he spoke or not. It was presumptuous nonsense to feel sorry for a girl like this. Whatever she did, she intended to do; there was no helplessness or futility in those fine features.

Alan felt ashamed of himself for trying to find out about her in any indirect way. She deserved to be treated with absolute honesty and candor. He knew she would not misunderstand anything else.

“I came back here to see you,” he said bluntly.

She accepted that tranquilly.

“As soon as I saw you, I felt a very great interest in you,” he went on. “I don't mean that as an impertinence, or as a compliment. It's simply the truth. There are some human beings who make that sort of impression on others, and it seems to me a foolish and a wrong thing to stifle that interest because it doesn't happen to be conventional.”

“As a human. being, I welcome your interest,” said she, with her quiet smile. “I've heard of you from Noel, and I'm sure I should enjoy talking to you.”

“Of course I knew at once that you weren't what you—you pretended to be,” he went on rather clumsily.

She stopped him.

“It wasn't pretending, Mr. Lorrimer. I am here as a servant.”

“You shouldn't be.”

“It suits me. After all, there's nothing better in life than really serving the people who need you, is there?”

“Sometimes there is,” he answered promptly. “It may mean the sacrifice of a fine life to a much less valuable one.”

A faint color rose in her cheeks.

“Well, you see,” she said, “I don't feel wise and perfect enough to judge which lives are the most valuable.”

He was silent, because he could not well say that her life was a hundred times more valuable than all the Mrs. Carews and Dr. Hunters ever born—that in her grave youth, and her fine and dignified simplicity, she seemed to him absolutely invaluable.

“I dare say you're right,” he answered seriously. “I'm sure your way is a good way. If you think you really would care to talk to me, when may I come again?”

“I have Sunday afternoons off,” she answered, and he believed there was a hint of a laugh in her voice.

“Then I'll come at—”

“Oh, no! That's not the way it's done. I'll meet you somewhere and we'll take a walk,” she said, and this time she could not suppress a smile.

Alan refused to smile, however. He didn't care if she came in an apron. He was willing to sit on the back steps, or in the kitchen, so long as he could be with her. It wasn't a joke—it was serious, the most serious thing he had ever known.

He proposed a convenient meeting place, and she agreed to it.

“But I'd rather you didn't mention me to any one, please,” she added. “I like a—a very quiet life, just now.”

V

This day was going to be the day. Nothing was going to put him off—not the fact that the mirror showed him a face he hated to think was his own, not the inner voice which warned him that it might be better to remain in doubt and still have hope. He didn't want hope, if it was a false one.

He went downstairs, aware of all sorts of new defects in himself. He felt that he was the most commonplace, uninteresting fellow imaginable, and that there was nothing about him that could possibly please or interest any one.

Mrs. Lorrimer and a group of friends were on the veranda. He saluted them with a strange sort of severity, and went off down the road, in an odd state of despair and determination.

“Yes,” said his mother proudly. “It's very unusual to see a man as serious as Alan is, at his age!”

She was wrong. She had herself seen any number of young fellows of twenty-seven overtaken by exactly the same sort of seriousness, only, in the case of her son, she didn't recognize it. Alan himself, however, had known what it was for weeks—it was Judith.

She had told him to call her Judith, and he did, hundreds of times, but not once in her hearing. Indeed, there was an astounding difference between the things he said to her when she was not there and the words she actually heard from him. If she could only have heard those other things, or guessed them! He knew that what he was going to say would be so inferior to what he felt and thought.

He turned into the lane where they always met, and sat upon the stone wall to wait. He was thinking about her, in a curious way, half wretched, half blissful. He didn't care two straws about her very humble position, nor did she. He had sat on the back steps and talked to her when the others were out, he had seen her in an apron, peeling potatoes, and she was more than ever exalted in his eyes by her quiet acceptance of such things. There was to him a sort of nobility in everything she did, in all her words and gestures, in her smile, even in her little transient moments of gayety.

Nor did he care two straws for the mystery that surrounded her. Wherever she came from, whatever her name or her history or her reason for living as she did, he knew that she was right, and could never be anything else.

No—the things that troubled him were those things which so often trouble people in his condition—all sorts of doubts and alarms and hopes and determinations mixed together. He wasn't good enough, but he was obliged to convince her that he was. She couldn't care for him, and yet she must.

At last he saw her coming, and went forward to meet her. She was walking unusually fast, as if, he thought with a fast beating heart, she were hurrying to him. Whatever joy he had felt in that thought vanished at the sight of her face.

“Judith!” he said. “Tell me, what has happened?”

She had all her usual fine composure, but she was very pale, and, in some subtle way apparent more to his heart than to his eyes, there was grief upon her face. She did not answer him, but she held out her hand, and he fancied that she clung to him.

“Let's walk a little,” she said, after a moment.

They went on side by side along the lane, thick with cool, white dust under the old trees. So dense was the foliage on the branches meeting overhead that the light came through it greenish and wavering, like water. The dust might have been the sandy floor of the sea, and the church bells that rang seemed mournful and distant, as they must sound to the mermaids.

A painful sense of unreality oppressed Alan. He didn't know her; she was terribly remote, a stranger, indifferent to him. Not once in all the time they had spent together had she talked freely about herself, about her life. She might have any number of anxieties and griefs of which he had no suspicion. She had been friendly, but in such an impersonal, untroubled way!

At last they reached the fence at the foot of the lane, where the fields began, and she spoke.

“Noel has gone,” she said.

“Gone?” he echoed.

“He left a letter,” she continued. “Perhaps I had better read you a part of it.” She took a letter out of her pocket, and turned as he noticed, past the first page to the second. She read:

“So I've taken this job in the airplane factory. It's a remarkably good job, and I expect to do rather more than well. I'm sorry, my dearest girl, to disappoint you so after all you've done for me, but, to be frank, I can't be a doctor. I always hated the whole thing. I'd never have been any good at it. Now I've found the one thing I am good at. I think you know how I felt about Nesta Lorrimer, and now I see some faint chance of being able to speak to her some day.

“Try to forgive me, Judith. It is really the best and kindest thing I can do for you—to clear out and leave you free.

“That's all that matters,” she ended. “So you see—”

Her look amazed and angered him terribly. She seemed so sure that he would understand and sympathize. She wasn't a child, she was very far from slow-witted, and she must have seen how it was with him. And now this!

Try to forgive me, Judith. It is the best and kindest thing I can do for you—to clear out and leave you free.

Such bitterness and pain overwhelmed him that he could scarcely speak.

“I'd rather—go now,” he said. “Another time—I can't—”

“But—” she began.

“Not now!” he said vehemently. “It was cruel of you to do this. Why didn't you tell me before that you weren't free? Why did you let me go on? I trusted you so! And all this time you've been thinking of him! No, please don't speak to me! Let me go!”

She was looking at him with a curious sort of inquiry, her dark brows drawn together in a faint frown.

“You don't understand,” she said. “I thought you had guessed long ago. I didn't think you'd have—gone on like this, if you hadn't guessed!”

She was not by nature impulsive, but it was impulse alone that moved her now. She came nearer to him, laid her hand on his shoulder, and looked into his face, with bright tears in her eyes.

“Oh, Alan!” she cried. “It was a beautiful thing to do—to accept me on faith, like that! Not to know, or to care! Oh, Alan, my dear!”

“Judith!” he said. “Don't you see what you've done? Nothing else could have mattered to me, except your caring for him—”

“For Noel?” she asked. “I'm afraid I cared for him a little too much—more than was good for him. But, you see, he's my only brother.”

“Brother!” shouted Alan. “Then why—”

“Walk home with me, and I'll explain,” said she. “I thought you had found out long ago.”

Alan went on by her side, willing to wait forever for any further explanation. There were a few questions he wanted to ask, and Judith answered them to his satisfaction, but they had nothing to do with Noel.

“Now look!” said she.

He did look, but he saw nothing but the front of Dr. Hunter's neat little house.

“I don't see anything,” he said.

She opened the gate, and he followed her along the path and up on the veranda.

“Look at that!” she said.

It was nothing but the usual sign in the window, “Noel”—but it wasn't! In blue letters on a white ground was printed:

JUDITH HUNTER, M.D.

VI

“You see,” she said, a little later, when they were in the library, “Noel and I were left orphans when we were very young, and Aunt Katherine Carew took care of us. I couldn't begin to tell you all she did, all the sacrifices she made. Naturally, it was Noel, the boy, that she hoped and expected most from. I wanted to study medicine, and poor Noel couldn't make up his mind exactly what he wanted to do; so he chose that, too, and we studied together. It was a terrible strain for Aunt Katherine. It took almost all she had, and after we'd both left the hospital, she couldn't possibly set up two young doctors. We talked it over, and it was my idea to give him his chance first. He's two years older, and—well, I thought I could wait. Poor Aunt Katherine couldn't manage everything herself, and we couldn't afford a servant, and yet she felt that it was very important to keep up appearances; so I decided that I would be the servant. I intended to be invisible until I was ready to appear as a full-fledged M.D. myself.” She paused, and smiled a little. “We both worked very hard to make a doctor of Noel,” she went on. “I think now that we tried a little too hard. If he hadn't felt that so much was expected of him, he might have gone through with it.”

“He may do better where he is,” said Alan.

“I can't think that,” said she, “even if he makes a great deal of money; because, for me, our profession is by far the noblest one in the world. There's nothing else so fine and so—”

“Absolutely nothing else?” asked Alan. “Nothing to compare with it?”

He thought that the slight confusion she betrayed was infinitely more becoming to her than her usual composure.

“Well, of course,” said she, “there's—there's you!”