But Dr. Blair’s increasing practice and the widow’s preoccupation presently ended their brief intimacy.  It was well known that she encouraged no suitors at the hotel, and his shyness and sensitiveness shrank from ostentatious advances.  There seemed to be no chance of her becoming, herself, his patient; her sane mind, indolent nerves, and calm circulation kept her from feminine “vapors” of feminine excesses.  She retained the teeth and digestion of a child in her thirty odd years, and abused neither.  Riding and the cultivation of her little garden gave her sufficient exercise.  And yet the unexpected occurred!  The day after Starbottle left, Dr. Blair was summoned hastily to the hotel.  Mrs. MacGlowrie had been found lying senseless in a dead faint in the passage outside the dining room.  In his hurried flight thither with the messenger he could learn only that she had seemed to be in her usual health that morning, and that no one could assign any cause for her fainting.

He could find out little more when he arrived and examined her as she lay pale and unconscious on the sofa of her sitting room.  It had not been thought necessary to loosen her already loose dress, and indeed he could find no organic disturbance.  The case was one of sudden nervous shock—­but this, with his knowledge of her indolent temperament, seemed almost absurd.  They could tell him nothing but that she was evidently on the point of entering the dining room when she fell unconscious.  Had she been frightened by anything?  A snake or a rat?  Miss Morvin was indignant!  The widow of MacGlowrie—­the repeller of grizzlies—­frightened at “sich”!  Had she been upset by any previous excitement, passion, or the receipt of bad news?  No!—­she “wasn’t that kind,” as the doctor knew.  And even as they were speaking he felt the widow’s healthy life returning to the pulse he was holding, and giving a faint tinge to her lips.  Her blue-veined eyelids quivered slightly and then opened with languid wonder on the doctor and her surroundings.  Suddenly a quick, startled look contracted the yellow brown pupils of her eyes, she lifted herself to a sitting posture with a hurried glance around the room and at the door beyond.  Catching the quick, observant eyes of Dr. Blair, she collected herself with an effort, which Dr. Blair felt in her pulse, and drew away her wrist.

“What is it?  What happened?” she said weakly.

“You had a slight attack of faintness,” said the doctor cheerily, “and they called me in as I was passing, but you’re all right now.”

“How pow’ful foolish,” she said, with returning color, but her eyes still glancing at the door, “slumping off like a green gyrl at nothin’.”

“Perhaps you were startled?” said the doctor.

Mrs. MacGlowrie glanced up quickly and looked away.  “No!—­Let me see!  I was just passing through the hall, going into the dining room, when—­everything seemed to waltz round me—­and I was off!  Where did they find me?” she said, turning to Miss Morvin.