“But bring your letter back for me to seal.  I want to see it in its envelope.  Oh, Doris, you are a good little girl!”

She shook her head, and hastened to hide herself from him in the other room; and it was a long time before she came back with the letter folded and in its envelope.  When she did, her face was composed and her manner natural.  She had quite made up her mind what her duty was and how she was going to perform it.

“Here is the letter,” said she, laying it in his outstretched hand.  Then she turned her back.  She knew, with a woman’s unerring instinct why he wished to handle it before it went.  She felt that kiss he folded away in it, in every fibre of her aroused and sympathetic heart, but the hardest part of the ordeal was over and her eyes beamed softly when she turned again to take it from his hand and affix the stamp.

“You will mail it yourself?” he asked.  “I should like to have you put it into the box with your own hand.”

“I will put it in to-night, after supper,” she promised him.

His smile of contentment assured her that this trial of her courage and self-control was not without one blessed result.  He would rest for several days in the pleasure of what he had done or thought he had done.  She need not cringe before that image of Dread for two, three days at least.  Meanwhile, he would grow strong in body, and she, perhaps, in spirit.  Only one precaution she must take.  No hint of Mr. Challoner’s presence in town must reach him.  He must be guarded from a knowledge of that fact as certainly as from the more serious one which lay behind it.

XXVIII

I HOPE NEVER TO SEE THAT MAN

That this would be a difficult thing to do, Doris was soon to realise.  Mr. Challoner continued to pass the house twice a day and the time finally came when he ventured up the walk.

Doris was in the window and saw him coming.  She slipped softly out and intercepted him before he had stepped upon the porch.  She had caught up her hat as she passed through the hall, and was fitting it to her head as he looked up and saw her.

“Miss Scott?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Challoner.”

“You know me?” he went on, one foot on the step and one still on the walk.

Before replying she closed the door behind her.  Then as she noted his surprise she carefully explained: 

“Mr. Brotherson, our boarder, is just recovering from typhoid.  He is still weak and acutely susceptible to the least noise.  I was afraid that our voices might disturb him.  Do you mind walking a little way up the road?  That is, if your visit was intended for me.”

Her flush, the beauty which must have struck even him, but more than all else her youth, seemed to reconcile him to this unconventional request.  Bowing, he took his foot from the step, saying, as she joined him: