Lee stopped suddenly, as if he had hardly known how long he had been talking.  “I’m a pleasant guest!” he said, regret in his tone.  “I meant to tell you briefly the history of Evelyn’s illness, and here I’ve gone on unloading all my burdens of years.  What do you sit there looking so benevolent and sympathetic for, beguiling a fellow into making a weak-kneed fool of himself?  My worries are no greater than those of millions of other people, and here I’ve been laying it on with a trowel.  Forget the whole dismal story, and just give me a bit of professional advice about my little sister.”

“Look here, old boy,” said his friend, “don’t go talking that way.  You’ve done just what I was anxious you should do—­given me your confidence.  I can go at your sister’s case with a better chance of understanding it if I know this whole story.  And now I’m going to thank you and send you off to bed for a good night’s sleep.  To-morrow we’ll take Evelyn in hand.”

“Bless you, Andy!  You’re the same old tried and true,” murmured Thorne Lee, shaking hands warmly.

Then Charlotte led him away up-stairs to see his sister, who had waked and wanted him.  Stooping over her bed, he felt a pair of slender arms round his neck and heard her voice whispering in his ear: 

“Thorny, I just wanted you to know that I think Mrs. Churchill is the dearest person I ever saw, and I’m going to sleep better to-night than I have for weeks.”

“Thank God for that!” thought Lee, and kissed the thin cheek of the girl with brotherly fervor.

Down-stairs in the hall a few minutes later Andrew Churchill advanced to meet his wife, as she returned to him after ministering to Evelyn Lee’s wants.

“Do you know,” said he, looking straight down into her eyes as she came up to him, “those words of Stevenson’s—­though they always fit you—­seem particularly applicable to you to-night?

    “Steel-true and blade-straight
      The great artificer
        Made my mate.’”

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV

“I think,” said Doctor Churchill, leaning back in his office chair, with a mingling of the professional and the friendly in his air, “that we can get at the bottom of Evelyn’s troubles without very much difficulty.”  He had just sent Evelyn back to Charlotte, after an hour in the office, during which he had subjected her to a minute and painstaking examination into the cause of her ill health.  And now to her brother, anxiously awaiting his verdict, he spoke his mind.

“If you’ll let me be very frank with you, Thorne,” he said, “I’ll tell you just what I think about Evelyn, and just what it seems to me is the proper course for us to take with her.”

“Go ahead; it’s exactly that I want,” Lee declared.  “I know well enough that my care of her has been seriously at fault.”

“Never in intention,” said Doctor Churchill, “only in the excess of your tenderness.  Evelyn has lived in overheated rooms, with hot baths, insufficient exercise, and improper food.  In the kindness of your heart you have been nourishing a little hot-house plant, and there’s no occasion for surprise that it wilts at the first blast of ordinary air.”