Mrs. Randal came to sit near her. Mrs. Shirley edged close to Mrs. Damer and began to whisper. The two girls went softly into the conservatory.

Anne's fingers played on. Now and then Mrs. Randal spoke to her, thanked her or begged her to continue. But presently she moved away and Anne did not miss her. She was far too deeply engrossed in her own thoughts.

"Lady Carfax!"

She started, every nerve suddenly on the alert.

"Don't stop playing!" he said, and as it were involuntarily she continued to play.

"I am coming to see you to-morrow," he went on. "What time would you like me to call?"

She was silent. But the blood had risen in a great wave to her face and neck. She could feel it racing in every vein.

"Won't you answer me?" he said. "Won't you fix a time?"

There was that in his voice that made her long earnestly to see his face, but she could not. With a great effort she answered:

"I am generally at home in the afternoon."

"Then will you be out to the rest of the world?" he said.

She stilled the wild tumult of her heart with desperate resolution. "I think you must take your chance of that."

"I am not taking any chances," he said. "I will come at the fashionable hour if you prefer it. But--"

He left the sentence unfinished with a significance that was more imperious than a definite command.

Anne's fingers were trembling over the keys. Sudden uncertainty seized her. She forgot what she was playing, forgot all in the overwhelming desire to see his face. She m.u.f.fled her confusion in a few soft chords and turned round.

He was gone.

CHAPTER II

THE KERNEL OF THE DIFFICULTY

"I want to know!" said Capper, with extreme deliberation.

He was the best-known surgeon in the United States, and he looked like nothing so much as a seedy Evangelical parson. Hair, face, beard, all bore the same distinguishing qualities, were long and thin and yellow.

He sat coiled like a much-knotted piece of string, and he seemed to possess the power of moving any joint in his body independently of the rest. He cracked his fingers persistently when he talked after a fashion that would have been intolerable in anyone but Capper. His hands were always in some ungainly att.i.tude, and yet they were wonderful hands, strong and sensitive, the colour of ivory. His eyes were small and green, sharp as the eyes of a lizard. They seemed to take in everything and divulge nothing.

"What do you want to know?" said Lucas.

He was lying in bed with the spring sunshine full upon him. His eyes were drawn a little. He had just undergone a lengthy examination at the hands of the great doctor.

"Many things," said Capper, somewhat snappishly. "Chief among them, why your tomfool brother--you call him your brother, I suppose?--brought me over here on a fool's errand."

"He is my brother," said Lucas quietly. "And why a fool's errand? Is there something about my case you don't like?"

"There is nothing whatever," said Capper, with an exasperated tug at his pointed beard. "I could make a sound man of you. It wouldn't be easy.

But I could do it--given one thing, which I shan't get. Is the sun bothering you?"

He suddenly left his chair, bent over and with infinite gentleness raised his patient to an easier posture and drew forward the curtain.

"I guess I won't talk to you now," he said. "I've given you as much as you can stand and then some already. How's that? Is it comfort?"

"Absolute," Lucas said with a smile. "Don't go, doctor. I am quite able to talk. I suppose matters haven't altered very materially since you saw me last?"

"I don't see why you should suppose that," said Capper. "As a matter of fact things have altered--altered considerably. Say, you don't have those fainting attacks any more?"

"No. I've learnt not to faint." There was a boyishly pathetic note about the words though the lips that uttered them still smiled.

Capper nodded comprehendingly. "But the pain is just as infernal, eh?

Only you've the grit to stand against it. Remember the last time I overhauled you? You fainted twice. That's how I knew you would never face it. But I've hurt you worse to-day, and I'm d.a.m.ned if I know how you managed to come up smiling."

"Then why do you surmise that you have been brought here on a fool's errand?" Lucas asked.

"I don't surmise," said Capper. "I never surmise. I know." He began to crack his fingers impatiently, and presently fell to whistling below his breath. "No," he said suddenly, "you've got the physical strength and you've got the s.p.u.n.k to lick creation, but what you haven't got is zeal.

You're gallant enough, Heaven knows, but you are not keen. You are pa.s.sive, you are lethargic. And you ought to be in a fever!"

His fingers dropped abruptly upon Lucas's wrist, and tightened upon it.

"That brother of yours that you're so fond of, now if it were he, I could pull him out of the very jaws of h.e.l.l. He'd catch and hold. But you--you are too near the other place to care. Say, you don't care, do you, not a single red cent? It's all one to you--under Providence--whether you live or die. And if I operated on you to-morrow you'd die--not at once, but sooner or later--from sheer lack of enthusiasm. That's my difficulty.

It's too long a business. You would never keep it up."

Lucas did not immediately reply. He lay in the stillness habitual to him, gazing with heavy eyes at the motes that danced in the sunshine.

"I guess I'm too old, doctor," he said at last. "But you are wrong in one sense. I do care. I don't want to die at present."

"Private reasons?" demanded Capper keenly.

"Not particularly. You see, I am the head of the family. I hold myself responsible. My brothers want looking after, more or less."

"Brothers!" sniffed Capper, with supreme contempt. "That consideration wouldn't keep you out of heaven. It's only another reason for holding back."

"Exactly," Lucas said quietly. "I don't know what Nap will say to me. He will call me a shirker. But on the whole, doctor, I think I must hold back a little longer."

"He'd better let me hear him!" growled Capper. "I wish to heaven you were married. That's the kernel of the difficulty. You want a wife.

You'd be keen enough then. I shouldn't be afraid of your letting go when I wasn't looking."

"Ah!" Lucas said, faintly smiling. "But what of the wife?"

"She'd be in her element," maintained Capper stoutly. "She'd be to you what the mainspring is to a watch, and glory in it. Haven't you seen such women? I have, scores of 'em, ready made for the purpose. No, you will only go through my treatment with a woman to hold you up. It's a process that needs the utmost vitality, the utmost courage, and--something great to live for--a motive power behind to push you on. There's only one motive power that I can think of strong enough to keep you moving. And that is most unfortunately absent. Find the woman, I tell you, find the woman! And--under Providence--I'll do the rest!"

He dropped back in his chair, cracking his fingers fiercely, his keen eyes narrowly observant of every shade of expression on his patient's face.

Lucas was still smiling, but his eyes had grown absent. He looked unutterably tired.