“A most beautiful little old lady, whom Miss Ruston seemed to be very anxious over, lest she suffer any harm.  Dr. Burns, when he heard of it, insisted on coming over here to make sure the house could be made perfectly dry and comfortable for her.”

“He was right.  Little old ladies must be taken care of, and young women are apt to think any place that is picturesque is safe.”

Miss Mathewson, seeing him apparently more interested in the subject than he was apt to be in the topics she brought up to amuse him, except as he assumed interest for her sake, went on with this one, and told him all she knew about Miss Ruston’s plans, ending with a description of the photographs she had shown.

“But I should like to see one of herself,” she added.  “She has such a—­brilliant face.  I can’t think of any other word to describe it!  When she looks at you she looks as if she—­cared so much to see what you were like!” She laughed at her own attempt to make her description clear.  “Not as if she were curious, you know, but as if she were interested—­attracted.  Can you imagine the expression?”

Leaver leaned his head back against the apple-tree trunk, and closed his eyes.  The spice-pink, still held at his nostrils, shielded his lips.  He looked rather white, his nurse noticed, but she had become accustomed to seeing these moments come upon him—­they passed away again, and Dr. Burns had said that no notice need be taken of them unless they were long in passing.  In spite of his pallor, he spoke naturally enough.

“Yes, I have seen such a face.  But many women—­Southern women, especially—­have that look of being absorbed in what one is saying; it is a pretty trick of theirs.  Won’t you sit down, too, on this old bench?  It is so warm yet, we may as well rest a little and walk when it is dusk and cooler.”

She sat down beside him, a pleasant picture to look at in her white lawn in which, at Ellen’s suggestion, she now made of herself, in the afternoons, a figure less severe than in her uniform.  She had even added a touch of turquoise to the chaste whiteness of the dress, a colour which brought out the beauty of her deep blue eyes and fair cheeks and even lent warmth to the pale hues of her hair.

“If you want to sit here, Dr. Leaver, I might run across and bring the book we are reading.  Would you like to hear a chapter?”

“Thank you, not to-night.  It’s a great book, and stirs the blood with its attempt to tell the story of a war whose real story can never be told by any one, no matter what skill the historian brings to the telling.  But I’m not in the mood for it to-night.  I wonder if, instead, you won’t tell me a bit about yourself.  You’ve never said a word about the work you do with my friend, Dr. Burns.  Do you like it?”

She hesitated.  Was this a safe subject, she wondered, for a surgeon who, she understood, had broken down from overwork?  But the question had been asked.