However, he need not distress himself, it appeared; Vesta Blyth kept her room for several days. At first Geoffrey found it easier not to speak of her; but the third day he pounced on Miss Vesta when she was filling her lamp, and startled her so that she almost dropped her scissors.

"Excuse me, Miss Vesta," he said; "what funny scissors! I shouldn't think you could cut anything with them. I was going to ask--how is your niece to-day? I trust the hysterical condition is pa.s.sing away?"

Miss Vesta sighed. "Yes, Doctor Strong," she said. "Vesta is quiet again, oh, yes, very quiet, and sleeping better; we are very grateful for your interest in her."

A few professional questions and answers followed. There were no acute or alarming symptoms. There was little to do for the girl, except to let her rest and "come round;" she would recover in time, but it might be a long time. Geoffrey felt somehow younger than he had; neurasthenia was a pretty word on paper, but he did not feel so sure about making a specialty of it.

Miss Vesta fluttered about her lamp; he became conscious that she wanted to say something to him. She began with sundry little plaintive murmurings, which might have been addressed to him or to the lamp.

"Pity! pity! yes, indeed. So bright and young, so full of hope and joy, and darkened so soon. Yes, indeed, very sad!"

Geoffrey helped her. "What is it, Miss Vesta?" he asked, tenderly. "You are going to tell me something."

Miss Vesta looked around her timidly. "Sister Phoebe did not wish me to mention it," she said, in a low tone. "She thinks it--indelicate.

But--you are so kind, Doctor Strong, and you are a physician. Poor little Vesta has had a disappointment, a cruel disappointment."

Geoffrey murmured something, he hardly knew what. The little lady hurried on. "It is not that I have any sympathy with--I never liked the object--not at all, I a.s.sure you, Doctor Strong. But her heart was fixed, and she had had every reason to suppose herself--it has been a terrible blow to her. Renunciation--in youth--is a hard thing, my dear young friend, a very hard thing."

She pressed his hand, and hurried away with her scissors, giving one backward look to make sure that the lamp showed no aspect that did not shine with the last touch of brilliancy.

Geoffrey Strong went down into the garden--he had not been there since the day of the sobbing--and paced about, never thinking of the pipe in his pocket. He found himself talking to the blue larkspur. "Beast!" was what he called this beautiful plant. "Dolt! a.s.s! inhuman brute! If I had the kicking of you--" here he recovered his silence; found pebbles to kick, and pursued them savagely up one path and down another. A mental flash-light showed him the ruffian who had wounded this bright creature; had led her on to love him, and then--either betrayed his brutal nature so that hers rose up in revolt, or--just as likely--that kind of man would do anything--gone off and left her. His picture revealed a smart-looking person with black hair and a waxed moustache, and complexion of feminine red and white (Geoffrey called it beef and suet).

"The extraordinary thing is, what women see in such a fellow!" he told the syringa. The syringa drooped, and looked sympathetic. The hammock was hanging there still--poor little thing! Geoffrey did not mean the hammock. He stood looking at the place, and winced as the sobs struck his ear again; memory's ear this time, but that was hardly less keen.

How terribly she grieved! she must have cared for him; bang! went the pebbles again.

There was a rustle behind the syringa-bush. Geoffrey looked up and saw Vesta Blyth standing before him.

He could not run away. He must not look at her professionally. Despair imparted to his countenance a look of stony vacuity which sat oddly on it.

The girl looked at him, and it seemed as if the shadow of a smile looked out of her shadowy eyes. "I thought you might be here, Doctor Strong," she said, quietly. "I am coming in to tea to-night. I am entirely myself again, I a.s.sure you--and first I wished--I want to apologise to you for my absurd behaviour the other day."

"Please don't!" said Geoffrey.

"I must; I have to. I am weak, you see, and--I lost hold of myself, that was all. It was purely hysterical, as you of course saw. I have had--a great trouble. Perhaps my aunts may have told you."

Good G.o.d! she wasn't going to talk about it? Geoffrey thought a subterranean dungeon would be a pleasant place.

"I--yes!" he admitted, feeling the red curling around his ears. "Miss Vesta did say something--it's an infernal shame! I wish I could tell you how sorry I am."

"Thank you!" said the girl; and a rich note thrilled in her voice.

Yes--it certainly was like a 'cello. "I did not know how you would--you are very kind, Doctor Strong. Dear Aunt Vesta; she would try to make the best of it, I know. Aunt Phoebe will not speak of it, she is too much shocked, but Aunt Vesta is angelic."

"Indeed she is!" said the young doctor, heartily. "And she is so pretty, too, and so soft and creamy; I never saw any one like her."

There was a moment of dreadful silence. Geoffrey sought desperately for a subject of conversation, but the frivolous spirit of tragedy refused to suggest anything except boots, and women never understand boots.

The strange thing was, that the girl did not appear to find the silence dreadful. She stood absently curling and uncurling a syringa-leaf between her long white fingers. All the lines of her were long, except the curl of her upper lip, and there was not an ungraceful one among them. Her face was quietly sad, but there was no sign of confusion in it. Good heavens! what were women made of?

Presently she turned to him, and again the shadow of a smile crept into her eyes. "You don't ask whether I am better, Doctor Strong," she said; and there was even a faint suggestion of mischief in her voice.

"No!" said Geoffrey. "I shall never ask you that again."

The shadow turned to a spark. "You might help me!" she exclaimed. "At least you need not make it harder for me--" she checked herself, and went on in a carefully even tone. "I am so ashamed of myself!" she said. "I thought when I came here that I had quite got myself in hand; the other day taught me a lesson. I was abominably rude, and I beg your pardon."

She held out her hand frankly; Geoffrey took it, and was conscious that, though it was too cold, it had the same quality that Miss Vesta's hand had, a touch like rose-leaves, smooth and light and dry. She shook hands as if she meant it, too, instead of giving a limp flap, as some girls did. It was impossible to tell the colour of her eyes; but she was speaking again.

"And--I want to say this, too. There isn't anything to do for me, you know; I must just wait. But--I know how I should feel in your place; and if there seem to be any interesting or unusual symptoms, I will tell you--if you like?"

"Thank you!" said Geoffrey. "It would be very good of you, I'm sure."

She turned to the syringa-bush again, and breaking off a spray, fastened it in her white gown. "You think of studying nerves, I believe?" she said, presently. "As a specialty, I mean. Well, they are horrible things." She spoke abruptly, and as if half to herself. "To think of this network of treachery spreading through and through us, lying in wait for us, leading us on, buoying us up with false strength, sham elasticity--and then collapsing like a toy balloon, leaving nothing but a rag, a tatter of humanity. Oh, it is shameful! it is disgraceful! Look at me! what business have I with nerves?"

She stretched out her long arms and threw her head back. The gesture was powerful; one saw that strength was the natural order of life with this lithe, long-limbed creature. But the next instant she drooped together like a tired lily.

"I know that is nonsense!" she said, moodily. "I know it just as well as you do. I am tired; I think I'll go in now."

"Why not try the hammock?" Geoffrey suggested. "The garden is better than the house to-day. Or--do you like the water? My canoe came yesterday; why not come out for a short paddle?"

The girl looked at him doubtfully. "I--don't know!"

"Best thing in the world for you!" said Geoffrey, who had fully recovered his ease, and felt benevolently professional. "You ought to keep out-of-doors all you can. I'll get some shawls and a pillow."

Vesta looked longingly out at the water, then doubtfully again at the young doctor. "If you are sure--" she said; "if you really have time, Doctor Strong. Your patients--"

"Bother my patients!" said the young doctor.

An hour later, Miss Phoebe Blyth was confronting a flushed and panting matron at the front door.

"No, Mrs. Worrett, he has not come in yet. It is past his customary hour, but he has been detained, no doubt, by some urgent case. Doctor Strong never spares himself. I fear for him sometimes, I must confess.

Will you step in and wait, or shall I--colic? oh! if that is all, it will hardly be necessary to send the doctor out. I shall take the liberty of giving you a bottle of my checkerberry cordial. I have made it for forty years, and Doctor Strong approves of it highly. Give the baby half a teaspoonful in a wine-gla.s.s of hot water, and repeat the dose in an hour if not relieved. Not at all, I beg of you, Mrs.

Worrett. It is a pleasure to be able to relieve the babe, as well as to spare Doctor Strong a little. He comes in quite exhausted sometimes from these long trips. Good evening to you, ma'am."

CHAPTER VII.

FESTIVITY

The Ladies' Society was to meet at the Temple of Vesta; or, rather (since that name for the brick house was known only to the old and the young doctor), at the Blyth Girls'. The sisters always entertained the society once a year, and it was apt to be the favourite meeting of the season. It was the peaceful pastime of two weeks, for Miss Phoebe and Miss Vesta, to prepare for the annual festivity, by polishing the already shining house to a hardly imaginable point of brilliant cleanliness. In the kitchen of the Temple, Diploma Grotty ruled supreme, as she had ruled for twenty years. Miss Phoebe was occasionally permitted to trifle with a jelly or a cream, but even this was upon sufferance; while if Miss Vesta ever had any culinary aspirations, they were put down with a high hand, and an injunction not to meddle with them things, but see to her parlours and her chaney.

This injunction, backed by her own spotless ideals, was faithfully carried out by Miss Vesta. Miss Phoebe, by right of her position as elder sister and martyr to rheumatism (though she sometimes forgot her martyrdom in these days), took charge of the upper cla.s.s of preparation; examined the lace curtains in search of a possible st.i.tch dropped in the net, "did up" the frilled linen bags that formed the decent clothing of the window-ta.s.sels, the tidies, and the entire stock of "laces" owned by her and her sister. One could never be sure beforehand which collar one would want to wear when the evening came, and while one was about it, it was as well to do them all; so for many days the sewing-room was adorned with solemn bottles swathed in white, on which collars, cuffs, and scarfs were delicately st.i.tched. Miss Vesta--cleaned.

For some days the young doctor had been conscious of a stronger odour than usual of beeswax and rosin. Also, the tiny room by the front door, which was sacred as his office, began to shine with a kind of inward light. No one was ever there when he came in,--no one, that is, save the occasional patient,--but he always found that his papers had a.s.sembled themselves in orderly piles on the table where he was wont to throw them; that the table itself had become so glossy that things slipped about or fell off whenever he moved them; and that no matter where he left his pipes, he always found them ranged with exact symmetry on the mantel-shelf. (If he could have known the affectionate terror with which those delicate white old fingers touched the brown, fragrant, masculine things! There were four of the pipes, Zuleika, Haidee, Nourmahal, and Scheherezade; the fellows used to call them his harem, and him Haroun Alraschid.)

Geoffrey was always careful about wiping his feet when he came in; he was a well-brought-up lad, and never meant to leave a speck on the polished floor. Now, however, he was aware of fragrant, newly rubbed spots that appeared as if by magic every time he returned through the entry after pa.s.sing along it. Several times he saw a gray gown flutter and disappear through a doorway; but it might have been Diploma.

One day, however,--it was the very day of the party,--he chanced to come into the parlour for a match or the like, and found Miss Vesta on her knees, apparently praying to one of the teak-wood chairs; and the girl Vesta, white as wax, standing beside another, rubbing it with even, practised strokes. The young doctor looked from one to the other.