“You have placed us all under deep obligations to you, sir,” said Mr. Denham, with a smile in which the severity of his features melted.

“The obligations are on my side, sir,” replied Lynde.  “I owe Mrs. Denham a great many kindnesses.  I wish I could have found some happier way than the present to express my sense of them.”

“I sincerely hope she was not justified in allowing you to take this long journey.  I beg of you to tell me what has happened.  Mrs. Denham has been anything but explicit.”

She had merely announced Ruth’s illness, leaving it to Lynde to inform Mr. Denham of the particulars.  That gentleman wrinkled his brows involuntarily as he listened to Lynde’s account of his mountain excursion alone with Ruth and the result.  “I have not seen Miss Denham since,” said Lynde, concluding his statement, in which he had tripped and stumbled woefully.  “I trust that Mrs. Denham’s anxiety has exaggerated her niece’s condition.”

“Ruth is far from strong,” replied Mr. Denham, “and my wife is almost morbidly quick to take alarm about her.  In fact, we both are.  Do you know how the trains run to Geneva?  Is there anything earlier than the evening express?”

Lynde did not know.

“We will ascertain after breakfast,” continued Mr. Denham.  “Of course you have not breakfasted yet.  You ought to be in appetite by this time.  I am unusually late myself, this morning, and my friend, the doctor, is still later.  We tired ourselves out yesterday in a jaunt to Fontainebleau.  The doctor’s an incorrigible sightseer.  Ah, there he is!  Mr. Lynde, my friend, Dr. Pendegrast.”

Lynde did not start at hearing this unexpected name, though it pierced his ear like a sharp-pointed arrow.  He was paralyzed for an instant; a blur came over his eyes, and he felt that his hands and feet were turning into ice However, he made an effort to rise and salute the elderly gentleman who stood at his side with a hand stretched out in the cordial American fashion.

Evidently Dr. Pendegrast did not recognize Lynde, in whose personal appearance three years had wrought many changes.  The doctor himself had altered in no essential; he was at that period of man’s life—­between fifty and sixty—­when ravaging time seems to give him a respite for a couple of lustrums.  As soon as Lynde could regain his self-possession he examined Dr. Pendegrast with the forlorn hope that this was not his Dr. Pendegrast; but it was he, with those round eyes like small blue-faience saucers, and that slight, wiry figure.  If any doubt had lingered in the young man’s mind, it would have vanished as the doctor drew forth from his fob that same fat little gold watch, and turned it over on its back in the palm of his hand, just as he had done the day he invited Lynde to remain and dine with him at the asylum.

“Why, bless me, Denham!” he exclaimed. laying his ear to the crystal of the time-piece as if he were sounding a doubtful lung, “my watch has run down—­a thing that hasn’t happened these twenty years.”  As he stood with his head inclined on one side, the doctor’s cheery eyes inadvertently rested upon Mr. Denham’s face and detected its unwonted disturbance.