“If you’ll bring Jane to that way of thinking,” retorted Charley, with vulgar frankness, “I’ll give you five hundred dollars down.  If you’ll thoroughly corrupt her mind and persuade her to neglect her duty to me, I’ll make it a thousand.”

He was jesting!  It was monstrous, with Jane lying ill in her mother’s room; it was indecent; it was grossly immoral; but he was actually jesting!  Not even scandal, not even the doctor’s presence in the house, could suppress his incorrigible spirit of levity.  “If I were Jane, I’d never speak to him,” thought Gabriella, and the question flashed through her mind, “how in the world could she ever have loved him?” It was impossible for her to conceive of any situation when Charley could have made a girl fall in love with him.  Though she had heard stories of his early conquests, she had never believed them.  There were times when she almost liked him, but it was the kind of liking one gave to an inferior, not to an equal.  She admitted his charm, but it was the charm of an irresponsible creature—­the capricious attraction of a child or an animal.  Her common sense, she told herself, would keep her from making a mistake such as Jane had made with her life; and, besides, she was utterly devoid of the missionary instinct which had lured Jane to destruction.  “If I ever marry, it will be different from that,” she thought passionately.  “It will be utterly different!”

The door of Mrs. Carr’s room opened suddenly, Marthy’s name was called in a high voice, and the doctor was heard saying reassuringly:  “She is over the worst.  There is no need to worry.”

“Don’t send me in there alone, Gabriella,” begged Charley piteously.  “I’d rather face bullets than Jane in an attack.”  His bravado had deserted him, and he appeared positively craven.  The stiffness seemed to have gone not only out of his character, but out of his clothes also.  Even his collar had become limp with emotion.

“Well, I don’t care,” answered Gabriella, “you’ve got to stand it.  There’s no use squirming when you’ve only yourself to blame.”  With a malicious pleasure, she watched the consternation in Charley’s face, while the doctor’s footsteps came rapidly down the hall and stopped at the threshold of the parlour.

“You may go in, Mr. Gracey—­your wife is asking for you; but be very careful not to say anything that might disturb her.  Just keep her as quiet as you can for a few hours.”

Then the door in the distance opened again, and Mrs. Carr, in the hollow tones of destiny, called:  “Gabriella, Jane is waiting to speak to her husband.”

“Come, Charley,” ordered Gabriella, grimly, and a moment later she pushed him across her mother’s threshold and turned back into the hall.  “I hope she’ll make him squirm,” she said to herself, with relish.  Nothing, she felt, except the certainty of Charley’s squirming, could make up to her for the half-hour she had just spent with him.