She looked at him, her large, dark eyes slightly contracting, making neither protest nor assent.  He drew a long breath of satisfaction.

“Of course you’ll stay,” he said; “it’s the right thing to do, and we both know it.  You don’t want to kill a man, no matter how much he desires or deserves it.  Doctors and women—­they sometimes are fatal, but they don’t consciously mean to be, now do they?  We don’t ask many questions out here in these hills, and I will never bother you, I feel entirely free to ask you to remain at least for a few days—­or maybe weeks.”

[Illustration:  Doctors and women—­they sometimes are fatal.]

Her eyes still were on his face.  It was a face fit for trust.  “Very well,” said she at length, quietly.  “If you think it is necessary.”

It was thus that Josephine St. Auban became the head of Tallwoods household.  Not that week did she leave, nor the next, nor the one thereafter.  The winter advanced, it was about to wane, and still she remained.  Slowly, the master advanced toward recovery.  Meantime, under charge of the mistress, the household machine fell once more into proper ways.  The servants learned obedience.  The plans for the work of the spring somehow went on much as formerly.  Everywhere there became manifest the presence of a quiet, strong, restraining and self-restrained influence.

In time the doctor became lighter in his speech, less frequent in his visits.  “You’re not going to lose that musical leg, Dunwody,” said he.  “Old Ma Nature beats all us surgeons.  In time she’ll fill you in a nice new bone along there maybe, and if you’re careful you’ll have two feet for quite a while yet to come.  You’ve ruined old Eleazar’s fiddle, though, taking that E string!  Did I ever tell you all about that coon dog of mine I had, once?”

Dunwody at last reached the point of his recovery where he could grin at these remarks; but if anything, he had grown more grim and silent than before.  Once in a while his eyes would linger on the face of Josephine.  Little speech of any kind passed between them.  There were no callers at Tallwoods, no news came, and apparently none went out from that place.  It might have been a fortress, an island, a hospital, a prison, all in one.

At length Dunwody was able safely to leave his room and to take up a resting place occasionally in the large library across the hall.  Here one day by accident she met him.  He did not at first note her coming, and she had opportunity now carefully to regard him, as he stood moodily looking out over the lawn.  Always a tall man, and large, his figure had fined down in the confinement of the last few weeks.  It seemed to her that she saw the tinge of gray crawling a little higher on his temples.  His face was not yet thin, yet in some way the lines of the mouth and jaw seemed stronger, more deeply out.  It was a face not sullen, yet absorbed, and above all full, now, of a settled melancholy.