’Now, what can he want?  Olive is quite well.  He looks at her tongue and feels her pulse.  How do you do, Dr. Reed?  Here is your patient, whom you will find in the best health and spirits.’

As he was about to reply, Alice came into the room, and she tried to carry on the conversation naturally.  But the silence of Mrs. Barton and Milord made this difficult; Dr. Reed was not a ready talker, and this morning his replies were more than ever awkward and constrained.  At last it dawned on Alice that he wanted to speak to her alone; and in answer to a remark he had made concerning the fever dens in Gort she said: 

’I wanted to ask you a question or two about typhoid fever, Dr. Reed; one of my heroines is going to die of it, and I should like to avoid medical impossibilities.  May I show you the passage?’

‘Certainly, Miss Barton; I shall be delighted to help you—­if I can.’

As soon as Alice left the room to fetch her manuscript the doctor hurriedly bade his patient, Milord, and Mrs. Barton, good-bye.

‘Aren’t you going to wait to see Alice?’ Mrs. Barton asked.

’I have to speak to the boy in charge of my car; I shall see Miss Barton as she comes downstairs.’

Mrs. Barton looked as if she thought this arrangement not a little singular, but she said nothing; and when Alice came running downstairs with a roll of MSS. in her hand, she attempted to explain her difficulty to the doctor.  He made a feeble attempt to listen to the passage she read aloud to him; and when their eyes met across the paper she saw he was going to propose to her.

’Will you walk down the drive with me? and we will talk of that as we go along.’

Her hat was on the hall-table; she took it up, and in silence walked with him out on the gravel.

‘Will I put the harse up, sor?’ cried the boy from the outside car.

‘No; follow me down the avenue.’

It was a wild autumn evening, full of wind and leaves.  The great green pasture-lands, soaked and soddened with rain, rolled their monotonous green turf to the verge of the blown beech-trees, about which the rooks drifted in picturesque confusion.  Now they soared like hawks, or on straightened wings were carried down a furious gust across the tumultuous waves of upheaved yellow, and past the rift of cold crimson that is tossed like a banner through the shadows of evening.

’I came here to tell you that I am going away; that I am leaving Ireland for ever.  I’ve bought the practice I spoke to you of in Notting Hill.’

‘Oh, I am so glad!’

’Thank you!  But there is another and more important matter on which I should like to speak to you.  For a long time back I had resolved to leave Ireland a sad or an entirely happy man.  Which shall it be?  You are the only woman I ever loved—­will you be my wife?’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘I was afraid to ask you before.  But,’ he added, sighing, ’I shan’t be able to give you a home like the one you are leaving.  We shall have to be very economical; we shall not have more than three hundred a year to live upon.  Will you be satisfied with that?’