“I cannot think of anything more unlikely,” returned the doctor, “unless the same conditions conspire, which is scarcely supposable, as I could easily prove to you.  You can understand, Mr. Lynde, that this has been a sore trial to Denham and his wife; they have had no children, and their hearts are bound up in Ruth.  The dread of a recurrence of the trouble has haunted them night and day in spite of all the arguments I could advance to reassure them.  They have got what our French friends call a fixed idea, which is generally an idea that requires a great deal of fixing.  The girl ought to marry—­every woman ought to marry, it is her one mission; but between their affections and their apprehensions, my friends have allowed Ruth no opportunity to form attachments.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Lynde quietly.

“Are you!” snapped the doctor.  “I am not.  I would like to see her married some day.  Meanwhile I would like to see a dozen lovers about her.  It is as natural for a young girl to coquet as it is for a canary to peck at its seed or trim its bill on a bit of fishbone.  It is had for the girl and the canary when they are prevented.”

“There is something human in this crisp old doctor,” said Lynde to himself, and then aloud:  “So Mr. Denham has no matrimonial plans for her?”

“None whatever.  Since Ruth’s recovery the family have been constantly on the wing, either at home or abroad.  Most of Ruth’s life has been passed over here.  I trust to your discretion.  You will perceive the necessity of keeping all this to yourself.”

“I do, and I now see that your travelling with the Denhams is a circumstance in no way connected with the state of Miss Denham’s health.”

“Not in the most distant manner, Mr. Lynde.  I am with them because they are my old friends.  I was worn out with professional work, and I ran across the sea to recuperate.  It is fortunate I did, since Ruth chances to need me.”

Lynde pondered a moment, and then asked abruptly:  “Does Mrs. Denham know of my former meeting with her niece?”

“I never breathed a word to Mrs. Denham on the subject of Ruth’s escapade,” replied the doctor.  “It would have pained her without mending matters.  Besides, I was not proud of that transaction.”

Mrs. Denham’s suppression of the doctor’s name, then, in speaking of him to Lynde, had been purely accidental.

“Miss Ruth’s strange hallucination, in her illness, as to personality, her fancy about the Queen of Sheba—­what was that traceable to?” asked Lynde, after a pause.

“Heaven only knows.  She was reading the Old Testament very much in those days.  I have sometimes accepted that as an explanation.  It often happens that a delusion takes its cue from something read, or thought, or experienced in a rational state.  In the case of the man Blaisdell, for example—­you remember him, with his marble ship?  He was formerly an enterprising ship-builder; during the Southern war he filled a contract with government for a couple of ironclads, and made his fortune.  The depression in shipping afterwards ruined him—­and he fell to constructing marble vessels!  He is dead, by the way.  I wonder if his reason has been given back to him—­in that other world.”