knowledge exactly how it happened, and how you took it, and everything that I said to you about it.  There will be sneers in the society-papers, from New York to San Francisco; and smooth-tongued gentlemen calling, to give us hints that we can stop these sneers by purchasing a de-luxe edition of a history of our ancestors for six thousand dollars.  There will be well-meaning and beautiful-souled people who will try to get you to confide in them, and then use their knowledge of your domestic unhappiness to blackmail you; there will be threats of law-suits from people who will claim that they have contracted a disease from you or your child—­your laundress, perhaps, or your maid, or one of these nurses——­”

“Oh, stop! stop!” she cried.

“I am quite aware,” he said, quietly, “that these things are not calculated to preserve the peace of mind of a young mother.  You are horrified when I tell you of them—­yet you clamour for the right to have Mrs. Abbott tell you of them!  I warn you, Sylvia—­you have married a rich man, who is exposed to the attacks of cunning and unscrupulous enemies.  You, as his wife, are exactly as much exposed—­possibly even more so.  Therefore when I see you entering into what I know to be a dangerous intimacy, I must have the right to say to you, This shall stop, and I tell you, there can never be any safety or peace of mind for either of us, so long as you attempt to deny me that right.”

5.  Dr. Gibson took his departure three or four days later; and before he went, he came to give her his final blessing; talking to her, as he phrased it, “like a Dutch uncle.”  “You must understand,” he said, “I am almost old enough to be your grandfather.  I have four sons, anyone of whom might have married you, if they had had the good fortune to be in Castleman County at the critical time.  So you must let me be frank with you.”

Sylvia indicated that she was willing.

“We don’t generally talk to women about these matters; because they’ve no standard by which to judge, and they almost always fly off and have hysterics.  Their case seems to them exceptional and horrible, their husbands the blackest criminals in the whole tribe.”

He paused for a moment.  “Now, Mrs. van Tuiver, the disease which has made your baby blind is probably what we call gonorrhea.  When it gets into the eyes, it has very terrible results.  But it doesn’t often get into the eyes, and for the most part it’s a trifling affair, that we don’t worry about.  I know there are a lot of new-fangled notions, but I’m an old man, with experience of my own, and I have to have things proven to me.  I know that with as much of this disease as we doctors see, if it was a deadly disease, there’d be nobody left alive in the world.  As I say, I don’t like to discuss it with women; but it was not I who forced the matter upon your attention——­”

“Pray go on, Dr. Gibson,” she said.  “I really wish to know all that you will tell me.”