He went away, smiling.  Ellen looked after him with a little frown of displeasure.  From the first moment of meeting him, some months ago, she had not liked Dr. James Van Horn.  He was the city’s most fashionable surgeon, she knew, and had a large practice among folk the reverse of “humble.”  She had seen in his eyes that he liked to look at her, and knew that in the moment he had stood beside her he had lost no detail of her face.  He had also, after some subtle fashion, managed to express his admiration by his own look, though with his smoothly spoken words he had not hesitated to say a thing about her husband which was at once somehow a compliment and a stab.

“I can’t imagine Dr. Van Horn taking much pains with ‘humble folk,’” Ellen said to herself.  “Yet he’s evidently consulting with Red at this house, which doesn’t seem exactly a ‘humble’ abode.  I wonder if they get on well together.  They’re certainly not much alike.”

The wait proved to be a long one.  Ellen had studied her surroundings with thoroughness in every direction before the house-door opened at last, and the two men came down the walk together.  They were talking earnestly as they came, and at a point some yards away they ceased to advance, and stood still, evidently in tense discussion over the case just left.  They spoke in the low tones customary with men of their profession, and their words did not reach Ellen’s ears.  But it was not difficult to recognize, as she watched their faces, that they were differing, and differing radically, on the matter in hand.

They had turned to face each other, and neither looked her way, so it was possible for Ellen to study the two without fear of intrusion.  They made an interesting study, certainly.  Dr. Van Horn’s face was impassive as to the play of his features, except that he smiled, from time to time,—­a smile which bore out Ellen’s previous feeling concerning its possibilities for cynicism rather than sympathy.  His eyes, however, steely blue and cold in their expression, told more than his face of antagonism to the man with whom he spoke.  But his command of manner, to the outward observer, who could not hear his words, was perfect.

As for R.P.  Burns, M.D., there was no disguising the fact that he was intensely angry.  That he strove, and strove hard, to control his manner, if not his anger, was perfectly evident to his wife, but that he was succeeding ill at the task was painfully apparent.  His colour was high—­it nearly matched his hair; his eyes burned like consuming fires under their dark brows; his lips spoke fast and fiercely.  He kept his voice down—­Ellen was thankful for that—­and his gestures, though forceful, were controlled; but she feared at every moment that he would break out into open show of temper, and it seemed to her that this she could not bear.