He did not pass at once, and he did not seem troubled at her anger.  “Dr. Breen,” he said, “I saw a good deal of pneumonia in the army, and I don’t remember a single case that was saved by the anxiety of the surgeon.”

He went now, as people do when they fancy themselves to have made a good point; and she heard him asking Barlow for Libby, outside, and then walking over the gravel toward the stable.  At that moment she doubted and hated him so much that she world have been glad to keep Libby from talking or even smoking with him.  But she relented a little toward him afterwards, when he returned and resumed the charge of his patient with the gentle, vigilant cheerfulness which she had admired in him from the first, omitting no care and betraying none.  He appeared to take it for granted that Grace saw an improvement, but he recognized it by nothing explicit till he rose and said, “I think I will leave Mrs. Maynard with you to-night, Dr. Breen.”

The sick woman’s eyes turned to him imploringly from her pillow, and Grace spoke the terror of both when she faltered in return, “Are you—­you are not going home?”

“I shall sleep in the house.”

“Oh, thank you!” she cried fervently.

“And you can call me if you wish.  But there won’t be any occasion.  Mrs. Maynard is very much better.”  He waited to give, in a sort of absent-minded way, certain directions.  Then he went out, and Grace sank back into the chair from which she had started at his rising, and wept long and silently with a hidden face.  When she took away her hands and dried her tears, she saw Mrs. Maynard beckoning to her.  She went to the bedside.

“What is it, dear?” she asked tenderly.

“Stoop down,” whispered the other; and as Grace bowed her ear Mrs. Maynard touched her cheek with her dry lips.  In this kiss doubtless she forgave the wrong which she had hoarded in her heart, and there perverted into a deadly injury.  But they both knew upon what terms the pardon was accorded, and that if Mrs. Maynard had died, she would have died holding Grace answerable for her undoing.

IX.

In the morning Dr. Mulbridge drove back to Corbitant, and in the evening Libby came over from New Leyden with Maynard, in a hired wagon.  He was a day later than his wife had computed, but as she appeared to have reflected, she had left the intervening Sunday out of her calculation; this was one of the few things she taxed herself to say.  For the rest, she seemed to be hoarding her strength against his coming.