“No; it is my meeting with you that he turned my discarded doubt into a certainty.”

“Then, I beg of you,” said Dr. Pendegrast throwing a glance across the quadrangle, “not to breathe a syllable of this; do not even think of it.  It has been kept from every one—­from even the most intimate friends of the family; Ruth herself is not aware of her temporary derangement.”

“Miss Denham does not know it?”

“She has not the remotest suspicion of the misfortune which befell her three years ago.”

“Miss Denham does not know it?” repeated Lynde in a dazed way.  “That—­ that seems impossible!  Pardon me.  How did it happen, Dr. Pendegrast?”

“I assume that you are not asking me through idle curiosity,” said the doctor, looking at him attentively.

“I have vital reasons for my question, Doctor.”

“I do not see why I should not tell you, since you know so much.  The family were in Florida that spring.  Ruth had not been well for several months; they had gone South on her account.  It was partly a pulmonary difficulty.  On their return North, Ruth was prostrated by a typhoid fever.  She recovered from that but with her mind strangely disordered.  The mental malady increased with her convalescence.  Denham and I were old friends; he had faith in my skill, and she was placed in my care.  She was brought to the asylum because I could not attend to her anywhere else.  I considered her case serious at first, even hopeless.  The human body is still a mystery, after science has said its last word.  The human mind is a deeper mystery.  While I doubted of her recovery, she recovered.  At the first intimation of returning health, she was taken home; when her wandering thought came back to her she was in her own room.  She remembered that she had been very ill, a long time ill; she had a faint impression that I had attended her meanwhile; but she remembered nothing more.  The knowledge of her affliction was kept a secret from her—­unwisely, I think.  They put it off and put it off, until it became very awkward to tell her.”

Lynde started as he recalled his conversation with Miss Denham on the rocks overhanging the Mer de Glace.  With unwitting cruelty he had told Ruth her own pathetic story, and she had unconsciously pitied herself!  A lump came into his throat as he remembered it.

“That was a mistake,” said Lynde, with an effort, “not to tell her.”

“An absurd mistake.  It has given my friends no end of trouble and embarrassment.”

“How long was she afflicted this way?”

“Something less than two months.”  “It was the result of the fever?”

“That chiefly.”

“It was not—­hereditary?” Lynde lingered on the word.

“No.”

“Then it is not likely to occur again?”