“You mean that there is—­no hope?”

And the doctor, relieved at the loosening of the tension, answered readily, glad to merge his humanity in his professional capacity:  “No, Mr. Newbold; I do not mean just that.  It is this bleak climate, the raw winds from the lake, which make it impossible for your mother to take the first step which might lead to recovery.  There is, in fact—­” he hesitated.  “I may say that there is no hope for her cure while here.  But if she is taken to a warm climate at once—­at once—­within two weeks—­and kept there until summer, then, although I have not the gift of prophecy, yet I believe she would be in time a well woman.  No medicine, can do it, but out-of-doors and warmth would do it—­probably.”

He put out his hand with a smile.  “I am indeed glad that I may temper judgment with mercy,” he said.  “Try the south, Mr. Newbold,—­try Bermuda, for instance.  The sea air and the warmth there might set your mother up marvellously.”  And as the young man stared at him unresponsively he gave a grasp to the hand he held, and turning, found his way out alone.  He stumbled down the dark steps of the third-rate apartment-house and into his brougham, and as the rubber tires bowled him over the asphalt he communed with himself: 

“Queer about those Newbolds.  Badly off, of course, to live in that place, yet they know what it means to call me in.  There must be some money.  I wonder if they have enough for a trip, poor souls.  Bah! they must have—­everybody has when it comes to life and death.  They’ll get it somehow—­rich relations and all that.  Burr Claflin is their cousin, I know.  David Newbold himself was rich enough five years ago, when he made that unlucky gamble in stocks—­which killed him, they say.  Well—­life is certainly hard.”  And the doctor turned his mind to a new pair of horses he had been looking at in the afternoon, with a comfortable sense of a wind-guard or so, at the least, between himself and the gales of adversity.

In the little drawing-room, with its cheap paper and its old portraits, Randolph Newbold faced his sister with the news.  He knew her courage, yet, even in the stress of his feeling, he wondered at it now; he felt almost a pang of jealousy when he saw her take the blow as he had not been able to take it.

“It is a death-sentence,” he said, brokenly.  “We have not the money to send her south, and we cannot get it.”

Katherine Newbold’s hands clenched.  “We will get it,” she said.  “I don’t know how just now, but we’ll get it, Randolph.  Mother’s life shall not go for lack of a few hundred dollars.  Oh, think—­just think—­six years ago it would have meant nothing.  We went south every winter, and we were all well.  It is too cruel!  But we’ll get the money—­you’ll see.”