“People are beginning to think there is,” she said in self-defence.

“They are mistaken,” he told her curtly, and it was about this time that Grizel left.  David followed her to her home soon afterwards, and Maggy Ann, who answered his summons, did not accompany him upstairs.  He was in the house daily, and she left him to find Grizel for himself.  He opened the parlour door almost as he knocked, and she was there, but had not heard him.  He stopped short, like one who had blundered unawares on what was not for him.

She was on her knees on the hearth-rug, with her head buried in what had been Dr. McQueen’s chair.  Ragged had been the seat of it on the day when she first went to live with him, but very early on the following morning, or, to be precise, five minutes after daybreak, he had risen to see if there were burglars in the parlour, and behold, it was his grateful little maid repadding the old arm-chair.  How a situation repeats itself!  Without disturbing her, the old doctor had slipped away with a full heart.  It was what the young doctor did now.

But the situation was not quite the same.  She had been bubbling over with glee then; she was sobbing now.  David could not know that it was a sob of joy; he knew only that he had never seen her crying before, and that it was the letter in her hands that had brought tears at last to those once tranquil and steadfast eyes.

In an odd conversation which had once taken place in that room between the two doctors, Gemmell had said:  “But the time may come without my knowing it.”  And McQueen’s reply was:  “I don’t think so, for she is so open; but I’ll tell you this, David, as a guide.  I never saw her eyes wet.  It is one of the touching things about her that she has the eyes of a man, to whom it is a shame to cry.  If you ever see her greeting, David, I’m sore doubting that the time will have come.”

As David Gemmell let himself softly out of the house, to return to it presently, he thought the time had come.  What he conceived he had to do was a hard thing, but he never thought of not doing it.  He had kept himself in readiness to do it for many days now, and he walked to it as firmly as if he were on his professional rounds.  He did not know that the skin round his eyes had contracted, giving them the look of pain which always came there when he was sorry or pitiful or indignant.  He was not well acquainted with his eyes, and, had he glanced at them now in a glass, would have presumed that this was their usual expression.

Grizel herself opened the door to him this time, and “Maggy Ann, he is found!” she cried victoriously.  Evidently she had heard of his previous visit.  “We have searched every room in the house for you,” she said gaily, “and had you disappeared for much longer, Maggy Ann would have had the carpets up.”

He excused himself on the ground that he had forgotten something, and she chided him merrily for being forgetful.  As he sat with her David could have groaned aloud.  How vivacious she had become! but she was sparkling in false colours.  After what he knew had been her distress of a few minutes ago, it was a painted face to him.  She was trying to deceive him.  Perhaps she suspected that he had seen her crying, and now, attired in all a woman’s wiles, she was defying him to believe his eyes.