“Well, let us go over it from the beginning.  Maybe I don’t know all the facts.  Have you the letter with you?”

She handed it to him.  He passed the reins to her and read it carefully to the end.

“Have you answered it yet?”

“No, I wanted to talk to you about it.  What do you think now?”

“I can’t see that it will make any difference.  She is not a woman to live alone.  I have always been surprised that she waited so long.  You are wrong, Jane, about this.  It is best for everybody and everything that Lucy should be married.”

“John, dear,” she said in a half-pleading tone—­ there were some times when this last word slipped out—­“I don’t want this marriage at all.  I am so wretched about it that I feel like taking the first steamer and bringing her home with me.  She will forget all about him when she is here; and it is only her loneliness that makes her want to marry.  I don’t want her married; I want her to love me and Martha and—­Archie—­and she will if she sees him.”

“Is that better than loving a man who loves her?” The words dropped from his lips before he could recall them—­forced out, as it were, by the pressure of his heart.

Jane caught her breath and the color rose in her cheeks.  She knew he did not mean her, and yet she saw he spoke from his heart.  Doctor John’s face, however, gave no sign of his thoughts.

“But, John, I don’t know that she does love him.  She doesn’t say so—­she says he loves her.  And if she did, we cannot all follow our own hearts.”

“Why not?” he replied calmly, looking straight ahead of him:  at the bend in the road, at the crows flying in the air, at the leaden sky between the rows of pines.  If she wanted to give him her confidence he was ready now with heart and arms wide open.  Perhaps his hour had come at last.

“Because—­because,” she faltered, “our duty comes in.  That is holier than love.”  Then her voice rose and steadied itself—­“Lucy’s duty is to come home.”

He understood.  The gate was still shut; the wall still confronted him.  He could not and would not scale it.  She had risked her own happiness—­even her reputation—­to keep this skeleton hidden, the secret inviolate.  Only in the late years had she begun to recover from the strain.  She had stood the brunt and borne the sufferings of another’s sin without complaint, without reward, giving up everything in life in consecration to her trust.  He, of all men, could not tear the mask away, nor could he stoop by the more subtle paths of friendship, love, or duty to seek to look behind it—­not without her own free and willing hand to guide him.  There was nothing else in all her life that she had not told him.  Every thought was his, every resolve, every joy.  She would entrust him with this if it was hers to give.  Until she did his lips would be sealed.  As to Lucy, it could make no difference.  Bart lying in a foreign grave would never trouble her again, and Archie would only be a stumbling-block in her career.  She would never love the boy, come what might.  If this Frenchman filled her ideal, it was best for her to end her days across the water—­best certainly for Jane, to whom she had only brought unhappiness.