He looked hard at her immovable face, with its fallen eyes, and then went out of the room.  He never quarrelled with his mother, because his anger, like her own, was dumb, and silenced him as it mounted.  Her misgivings had stung him deeply, and at the bottom of his indolence and indifference was a fiery pride, not easily kindled, but unquenchable.  He flung the harness upon his old unkempt horse, and tackled him to the mud-encrusted buggy, for whose shabbiness he had never cared before.  He was tempted to go back into the house, and change his uncouth Canada homespun coat for the broadcloth frock which he wore when he went to Boston; but he scornfully resisted it, and drove off in his accustomed figure.

His mother’s last words repeated themselves to him, and in that dialogue, in which he continued to dramatize their different feelings, he kept replying, “Well, the way to find out whether she cares is to ask her.”

X.

During her convalescence Mrs. Maynard had the time and inclination to give Grace some good advice.  She said that she had thought a great deal about it throughout her sickness, and she had come to the conclusion that Grace was throwing away her life.

“You’re not fit to be a doctor, Grace,” she said.  “You’re too nervous, and you’re too conscientious.  It is n’t merely your want of experience.  No matter how much experience you had, if you saw a case going wrong in your hands, you’d want to call in some one else to set it right.  Do you suppose Dr. Mulbridge would have given me up to another doctor because he was afraid he couldn’t cure me?  No, indeed!  He’d have let me die first, and I should n’t have blamed him.  Of course I know what pressure I brought to bear upon you, but you had no business to mind me.  You oughtn’t to have minded my talk any more than the buzzing of a mosquito, and no real doctor would.  If he wants to be a success, he must be hard-hearted; as hard-hearted as”—­she paused for a comparison, and failing any other added—­“as all possessed.”  To the like large-minded and impartial effect, she, ran on at great length.  “No, Grace,” she concluded, “what you want to do is to get married.  You would be a good wife, and you would be a good mother.  The only trouble is that I don’t know any man worthy of you, or half worthy.  No, I don’t!”

Now that her recovery was assured, Mrs. Maynard was very forgiving and sweet and kind with every one.  The ladies who came in to talk with her said that she was a changed creature; she gave them all the best advice, and she had absolutely no shame whatever for the inconsistency involved by her reconciliation with her husband.  She rather flaunted the happiness of her reunion in the face of the public, and she vouchsafed an explanation to no one.  There had never been anything definite in her charges against him, even to Grace, and her tacit withdrawal of them succeeded perfectly well.  The ladies, after some cynical tittering, forgot them, and rejoiced in the spectacle of conjugal harmony afforded them:  women are generous creatures, and there is hardly any offence which they are not willing another woman should forgive her husband, when once they have said that they do not see how she could ever forgive him.