CHAPTER I

“How is he now, doctor?  Don’t—­don’t tell me there is no hope!”

The wife, a tall, aristocratic looking woman who, despite her advanced years, her snow-white hair, her eyes now red and swollen from weeping, and pallid face seamed with careworn lines from constant vigils, still showed traces of former beauty, scanned the physician fearfully, trying to read in the expression of his countenance what the friend and man of science, out of sheer compassion, was doing his utmost to conceal.  He had just emerged from the sick chamber; the trained nurse, methodical and quick, and singularly attractive looking in her neat uniform, had closed the door noiselessly behind him.  Two young girls, one about eighteen and the other some four years her junior, both possessing more than average good looks, stood timidly in the background anxiously awaiting, together with their grief-stricken mother, to hear the dreaded verdict.

The physician paid no attention to them, but paced up and down the room, his manner stern and forbidding, his head inclined in deep thought, as if bent under the weight of tremendous responsibilities.  A noted specialist in pulmonary troubles, Dr. Wilston Everett was well past middle age, and his tall, erect figure, massive frame and fine, leonine head, crowned by a mass of stubborn, iron-gray hair, made him a conspicuous figure everywhere.  His expression, stern in repose, was that of a profound student; it was a face where lofty thoughts, humane feeling and every other noble attribute had left its indelible impress.

Mrs. Blaine watched him fearfully, afraid to intrude on his reflections.  Finally, summoning up courage, she stammered weakly: 

“How do you find him—­not worse, is he?”

The doctor made no reply, but for a few moments stood looking at the three women in silence.  He felt sorry for them—­so sorry that it was only by the exercise of the greatest self-control that he kept his eyes from filling with tell-tale tears.  Who, better than he, could realize the full extent of the misfortune which had suddenly befallen these poor people?  It was almost the same as if it had happened to himself.  Was he not, indeed, one of the family?  Had he not been present at poor Blaine’s wedding, brought each of these girls into the world and played with them on his knees?  Now they had grown up to be young women, they looked upon him as their second father.

Blaine, poor fellow, little thought that the end was so near!  That’s what he had got for giving up his life to the most exciting and ungrateful profession in the world.  He had worked himself to death for a pittance, until, giving way under the strain, his constitution completely undermined, he proved an easy victim for pneumonia.  If he had been less scrupulous, more of a grafter, if he had seen in his profession only the money to be made out of it, he might have