Agatha came back to the drawing-room, and went straight to her flowers. She did not look at her aunt.

"Well," asked the latter inquisitively. She loved discussing her own ailments.

"Well, there is nothing new. He evidently thinks you immensely better. So much better that I wonder he comes here at all."

"It is very kind of him to come," said Mrs. Greatorex calmly.

"It is too kind. And—for nothing."

"My dear Agatha, I'm afraid it cannot be for nothing. I expect he will see little symptoms of—-"

"I don't mean that. What"—impatiently—"I want to say is, that he gains nothing by coming here."

"Nothing in a pecuniary sense, certainly," said Mrs. Greatorex; "but he likes good society—-"

Agatha made a sudden movement.

"I wonder how you can do it," said she.

"Do what?" asked Mrs. Greatorex, letting the pretty little pale pink silk sock she was knitting lie upon her lap for a moment.

"Accept his services gratuitously?"

Mrs. Greatorex laughed.

"What have you got into your head now?" asked she. "He has attended me for the past year. Last month I sent him a cheque with a little hint to the effect that as I felt so much better I need not trouble him again. He came the next day. I then told him plainly I could afford no more fees out of my slender income. He said—very gracefully, as I thought—that he could never bear to resign a case until a perfect cure had been accomplished—or something to that effect. Well, why should I not allow him to be happy in his own way?"

"And I am a burden to you," said the girl in a low voice.

"My good child, never give yourself over to nonsense!" said Mrs. Greatorex, with a shrug. "You know very well I am delighted to have you."

She took up her little sock again and turned the heel.

The needles clicked on, and Agatha thought. Was her aunt delighted to have her? Sometimes things pointed that way. But certainly she was a burden to her, as Mrs. Greatorex's income was not only a small one, but she herself was a of a decidedly miserly disposition. The girl had certainly a miserable twenty pounds a year of her own, but that was too little. She made it suffice for her dress, but it sufficed very badly. It was all, however, her father, Colonel Nesbitt, had been able to leave her. Sometimes the girl felt that she loved her, worldly as she was. When she was sixteen, the colonel died. At sixteen she had found herself an orphan, without a friend, and almost penniless, and but that Mrs. Greatorex had then come forward, the poor child would hardly have known what to do or where to go. Fortune favours the brave, they say; sometimes, however, it favours the beautiful.

Agatha Nesbitt was beautiful, and suddenly fortune came to her in the shape of Mrs. Greatorex. It was not a great fortune, truly, but it lifted the girl for the moment out of her Slough of Despond.

But now another terror threatened her. This detestable Dr. Darkham, whose visits to her aunt for the past few months had been so regular—whose visits, now that her aunt had declared herself off his hands, were still so regular—troubled here more than she cared to think.

What there was in his manner to distress her she hardly knew—- hardly understood; but she had learned to regard his coming with fear and loathing—to dread those tÊte-À-tÊtes, when, in the little ante-room, he wrote out his prescriptions and gave her his instructions.

Not that a word had ever been spoken that all the world might not hear—not a look; and, after all, what was there in the lengthened regard of his dark, unfathomable eyes to alarm her? She could not tell. Not—not love, certainly. He—a married man!

She had remonstrated with her aunt very often. To accept his visits without payment! Mrs. Greatorex, whose pride in her birth was excessive, but who would have gone any lengths to save her pocket, had pooh-poohed the girl's expostulations, and had continued to accept Dr. Darkham's visits without protest.

. . . . . . .

Agatha roused herself from her thoughts.

"I know how good you have been to me always," said she with warmth. "You are my one friend. It is because I love you that I can't bear you to have this Dr. Darkham coming here like this. He—-"

"My dear, he comes only because he likes to get away from the atmosphere of his sordid home. That pays him. He likes nice people, you know. Why do you dislike the poor man so much?"

"Dislike him?"

"Yes, you do. Like all girls, you are full of nonsensical fads, and"—slowly—"it is my opinion that you think he is in love with you."

"I can't congratulate you, then, on the girls you have known!" said Agatha coldly.

"No?" Mrs. Greatorex laughed the little irritating laugh that belonged to her. "A poor compliment to yourself! Still, I have been studying you a little of late, and I feel sure I am right. Get this latest fad of all out of your head, my dear girl, and as soon as possible."

"You should remember he has a wife," said Agatha coldly.

"Why, so I should." Again that irritating little cackle grated on the girl's ears. "But really, it is very hard to remember. He himself forgets it so persistently. Poor man! who can blame him? Bad as he is, and, of course, we know he rose from the rankest of the ranks, still she—- What a woman! A perfect annoyance to the neighbourhood."

"I can't see how she annoys anybody. One never sees her."

"You'll see her to-morrow night at the Firs-Robinsons', anyway. Mrs. Poynter told me this morning that she was going."

"What?" said Agatha. She paused. She even forgot the argument in question in the thought of seeing Mrs. Darkham at the dance to-morrow night. How strange! "Are you sure she is going?"

"Quite sure."

"As a rule, she refuses all invitations."

"There's where she shows her one grain of sense."

"There's where Dr. Darkham shows his tyranny," said Agatha "I believe he doesn't allow her to go anywhere."

Mrs. Greatorex shrugged her thin, ladylike shoulders.

"I suppose you know by this time that 'people are mostly fools.' And even if such light talk be true, and Mrs. Darkham is such a nonentity as to be controlled in the way you declare, her husband is quite wise to exercise his power."

"It is not wisdom in this case, it is cowardice. He is afraid of her vulgarity."

"No wonder. She was a tradesman's daughter, wasn't she?"

"Well," with some fire, "wasn't he a tradesman's son?"

"Still consider!"

"Oh, you to consider!" the girl interrupted her vehemently—- "you who lay so much stress on 'family'; you who will hardly acknowledge the Firs-Robinsons because they cannot swear to a grandfather."

"What I was going to say was that Dr. Darkham must be pitied about his marriage, to a certain degree. He has risen out of the mire of his birth and his original surroundings. She has sunk deeper into hers. I think," said Mrs. Greatorex, who had a fond fancy that she was a sympathetic soul, "that, of all harrowing afflictions, the worst must be that of a man tied for life to an uncongenial companion."

"I think it must be infinitely worse for a woman to be tied for life to a thoroughly bad husband."

"My dear Agatha! You will end by representing Dr. Darkham as a modern Bluebeard. As for me, I pity him. And there are so many cases just like his. A young man of his parentage—nobody at all, in facts—starts in life, very naturally, by marrying somebody in his own class. Some dreadful person! Then he, being clever—a man—rises. She stands rootedly still. She is a millstone round his neck, weighing him down, keeping him back from the goal to which he would attain—the goal of equality with his superiors which he feels ought to be his, because of the intellect that ennobles him. Now we all know Mrs. Darkham. No wonder he hates her."

"For all that, if a man marries a woman of his own free-will he should deal fairly by her," said Agatha thoughtfully.

"Of course. But there are always exceptional cases. And surely Mrs. Darkham is one of them."

"I don't think so. She is very vulgar, and very fat, and unutterably dull; but one must remember that she was all that when he married her. What, then, does he look for now?"

"Perhaps for the 'h's' she is always dropping," said Mrs. Greatorex, with a laugh. "You say she never goes anywhere, that he keeps her in durance vile; but she is going to this dance to-morrow night at the Firs-Robinsons', and I saw her yesterday at the Poynters'. What is it about her that jars so dreadfully? She started the subject of that idiot son of hers, and wore it to tatters, whilst we all sat aghast, and wished ourselves dead. I was quite thankful Dr. Darkham wasn't there. I really think if he had been, he would have been quite justified in murdering her."

"Oh no!" The words seemed to fall from Agatha unconsciously. There was horror in them—she shuddered. "Aunt Hilda, how dreadful! To murder her!"

Mrs. Greatorex laid down her knitting.

"It wasn't so much that she was vulgar—had bad taste—but that she was so—so oppressive. And rude, too—very rude."

"I could fancy," said the girl slowly, "that she is very unhappy. I have often thought it."

"You are prejudiced. I could fancy that she is very nearly as much out of her mind as that terrible son of hers."

"Poor Edwy! I met him yesterday in the wood. He came crash through it like a young Samson. Poor, poor boy! To be deaf and dumb and idiotic seems—well, a cruel sentence."

"Strange how people like that live on! Useless—mere burdens—- creatures one shrinks from. Why, he must be almost grown up now."

"He is sixteen; but he looks a mere child. His body has grown, but his face has not; it is so young—pathetically young—and at times almost beautiful."

"Not when he is excited."

"No, no! And not when he laughs. What a frightful sound it is! You know, I suppose, that he can say one word. At least, not a word, but a noise that has a meaning."

"Mr. Blount told me about it. 'Sho' is the sound, is it not?"

"Yes; and it always means his mother. He calls to her in that way. It is very remarkable. You know he adores her. After all, I think she can't be without some good quality, when that poor stricken boy loves her so much."

"Like to like," said Mrs. Greatorex carelessly. "Really she is nearly as dull as he is. Let us forget her. What of to-morrow night? Did you hear who was likely to be there?"

"At the Firs-Robinsons'? Everybody, as far as I can see."

"Quite right, too. They are 'nobody,' if you like."

"I think Elfrida is charming," said Agatha quietly.

"Elfrida!" Mrs. Greatorex sniffed. "Elfrida, with Robinson at the end of it! Firs-Robinson because of the society craze for double names. Well, and so every one is to be there. What do they mean by every one?"

"Why"—laughing—"I suppose every one. And I hear Lord Stilton and his party, and Lord Ambert."

"Ambert!" Mrs. Greatorex let the sock fall to the floor this time. "Can it be true that he wants to marry that girl? I can't imagine Miss Robinson—a countess! But he is very hard up, and she has a great deal of money. Money is everything nowadays!" Then suddenly, leaning forward, and letting her brilliant eyes rest upon her niece's face, as if indignant with her, "Why haven't you money?" said she.

The uncontrollable ambition that ruled her whole life betrayed itself in these words. If Agatha had been an heiress she might have married Lord Ambert.