“Didn’t I cable my approval with a reckless disregard of expense?”

“Indeed you did.  But you couldn’t cable the italics that are in your face—­and it was the italics that we wanted!”

Upstairs in the rooms of old-time elegance and comfort to which Charlotte assigned them, Burns demanded to know how such quarters looked to his wife.

“You could put our whole house into that great living-room of theirs,” he asserted.  “As for these two rooms, they would take in our whole upper story.  Don’t you suppose stopping here will make you feel cramped at home?”

Ellen, arranging her hair before a low dressing-table of priceless old mahogany, shook her head at him in the mirror.

“Not a bit,” she denied.

“You used to live in a home like this one.”

“Not nearly so fine.  Dr. Leaver is a rich man by inheritance, entirely apart from his practice.  Between the two he must have a very large yearly income.  My family was not a rich one, only—­”

“Only old and distinguished.  Leaver has both—­family and money.  Not to mention power.  Your friend Charlotte ought to be a happy woman.”

“She surely ought, and is.  But not happier than the woman you see before you.”

Burns came close, lifted a strand of silky dark hair and drew it through his fingers.  Then he stooped and put it to his lips.

“You stand by the country doctor, do you?” he murmured.

“Always and forever, dear.”

“And yet you are a city woman, born and bred.”

“What has that to do with it?  I should rather drive in the Green Imp over the country hills with you than ride in the most superb limousine in Baltimore—­with any one else.”

He gathered her close in his arms for a minute.  “Begone, dull envy,” said he.  “From this moment I’ll rejoice with Jack over every worldly possession and envy him nothing, not even the power to give his wife everything the world counts riches.”

They went down to such a dinner as such homes are famous for.  The candle-light from the fine old family candelabra fell upon four faces brilliant with the mature youthfulness which marks the years about the early thirties, the richest years of all yet lived.  The splendid colour of the crimson roses in the centre of the table was not richer in its bloom than that in Charlotte’s cheeks, nor the sparkle of the lights more attractive than that in Ellen’s dark eyes.  As for the two men—­all the possible achievement of forceful manhood seemed written in their faces, so different in feature and colouring, so alike in the look of dominant purpose and the power born of will and untiring labour.

During dinner a telephone call summoned Leaver to a consultation.  Immediately at its close he went away, carrying Burns with him.

“You can’t take me to a consultation, Jack,” Burns had objected, with, however, a betraying light of eagerness in his eye.  He had been four months away from work—­he was hungry for it as a starving man for food.