“Yes.”

She had forgotten the smart carriage, and the horses that never came down, now.

“Good,” said the doctor, shortly and decisively.  “I will speak to you quite plainly to-day, for something leads me to trust you, and to say to you what I would say to no other person.  Something leads me to believe that you can do more for Addison than any one else.  Addison once implied it; but what I have observed for myself in your house leads me to be certain of it.”

“Oh,” said Cuckoo.

She had nothing more to say.  She could have said nothing more.  The stress of her excitement was too great.

“Look at that holly tree.  What a quantity of berries it has!” the doctor said.  “That’s because it is a hard winter.  Miss Bright, you are right in you conviction.  Valentine Cresswell is—­has been—­totally evil, and is deliberately, coldly, but with determination, compassing the utter ruin of the man who trusts him and believes in him—­of Addison.”

Cuckoo nodded again, this time with a strangely matter-of-course air, which assured the doctor in a flash of the long certainty of her knowledge of Valentine.

“Such a thing seemed to me entirely incredible,” the doctor pursued.  “I am forced—­forced—­to believe it is true.  But remember this:  I have known Mr. Cresswell for several years intimately.  I have been again and again with him and Julian.  I have noticed the extraordinary influence he had over Julian, and I know that influence used to be a noble influence, used solely for good.  Mr. Cresswell was a man of extraordinary high-mindedness and purity of life.  He had a brilliant intellect,” the doctor continued, forgetting to whom he was talking, as his mind went back to the Valentine of the old days.  “But, far more than that, he was born with a very wonderful and unusual nature.  It was written in his face in the grandeur—­I can call it nothing else—­of his expression.  And it was written in his life, in all his acts.  But, most of all it was written in all he did for Julian.  Ah, you look surprised!”

Indeed Cuckoo’s face, such of it as was visible under the black shadow of the veil, was a mask of blank wonderment.  She looked upon the doctor as all that was clever and perfect and extraordinary; so this, it seemed to her, idiocy of his outlook upon Valentine was too much for her manner.

“Well, I never!  Him!” she could not help ejaculating with a long breath, that was almost like a little puff.

“Remember,” said Dr. Levillier, “this was before you knew him.”

He had taken the trouble to ascertain from Julian the exact date of Valentine’s first introduction to the lady of the feathers.

“Oh yes,” said Cuckoo, still with absolute incredulity of the truth of the doctor’s panegyric expressed in voice and look.

“Men change greatly, terribly.”

“Oh, not like that,” she jerked out suddenly, moved by an irresistible impulse to contradict his apparent deduction.