’You should not talk your medical secrets so loud then, if you don’t want people to hear them.  I had to go into the store-room that day Dr Nicholls was here; cook wanted a jar of preserve, and stopped me just as I was going out—­I am sure it was for no pleasure of mine, for I was sadly afraid of stickying my gloves—­it was all that you might have a comfortable dinner.’

She looked as if she was going to cry again, but he gravely motioned her to go on, merely saying,—­

‘Well! you overheard our conversation, I suppose?’

‘Not much,’ she answered, eagerly, almost relieved by being this helped out in her forced confession.  ‘Only a sentence or two.’

‘What were they?’ he asked.

’Why, you had just been saying something, and Dr Nicholls said:  “If he had got aneurism of the aortal his days are numbered."’

‘Well.  Anything more?’

’Yes; you said, “I hope to God I may be mistaken; but there is a pretty clear indication of symptoms, in my opinion."’

‘How do you know we were speaking of Osborne Hamley?’ he asked; perhaps in hopes of throwing her off the scent.  But as soon as she perceived that he was descending to her level of subterfuge, she took courage, and said in quite a different tone to the cowed one which she had been using,—­

’Oh!  I know.  I heard his name mentioned by you both before I began to listen.’

‘Then you own you did listen?’

‘Yes,’ said she, hesitating a little now.

’And pray how do you come to remember so exactly the name of the disease spoken of?’

’Because I went—­now don’t be angry, I really can’t see any harm in what I did—­’

‘Then, don’t deprecate anger.  You went—­’

‘Into the surgery, and looked it out.  Why might not I?’

Mr. Gibson did not answer—­did not look at her.  His face was very pale, and both forehead and lips were contracted.  At length he roused himself, sighed, and said,—­

‘Well!  I suppose as one brews one must bake?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ pouted she.

‘Perhaps not,’ he replied.  ’I suppose that it was what you heard on that occasion that made you change your behaviour to Roger Hamley?  I have noticed how much more civil you were to him of late.’

’If you mean that I have ever got to like him as much as Osborne, you are very much mistaken; no, not even though he has offered to Cynthia, and is to be my son-in-law.’

’Let me know the whole affair.  You overheard,—­I will own that it was Osborne about whom we were speaking, though I shall have something to say about that presently—­and then, if I understand you rightly, you changed your behaviour to Roger, and made him more welcome to this house than you had ever done before, regarding him as proximate heir to the Hamley estates?’

‘I don’t know what you mean by “proximate."’

‘Go into the surgery, and look into the dictionary then,’ said he, losing his temper for the first time during the conversation.