The lieutenant stared him over with potential offence, in which his delicately pencilled mustache took the shape of a light sneer, and demanded in his turn, in English much better than Lanfear’s Italian:  “What right have you to ask?”

“The right of Miss Gerald’s physician.  She is an invalid in my charge.”

A change quite indefinable except as the visible transition from coxcomb to gentleman passed over the young lieutenant’s comely face.  “An invalid?” he faltered.

“Yes,” Lanfear began; and then, with a rush of confidence which the change in the officer’s face justified, “one very strangely, very tragically afflicted.  Since she saw her mother killed in an accident a year ago she remembers nothing.  She bowed to you because she saw you looking at her, and supposed you must be an acquaintance.  May I assure you that you are altogether mistaken?”

The lieutenant brought his heels together, and bent low.  “I beg her pardon with all my heart.  I am very, very sorry.  I will do anything I can.  I would like to stop that.  May I bring my mother to call on Miss Gerald?”

He offered his hand, and Lanfear wrung it hard, a lump of gratitude in his throat choking any particular utterance, while a fine shame for his late hostile intention covered him.

When the lieutenant came, with all possible circumstance, bringing the countess, his mother, Mr. Gerald overwhelmed them with hospitality of every form.  The Italian lady responded effusively, and more sincerely cooed and murmured her compassionate interest in his daughter.  Then all parted the best of friends; but when it was over, Miss Gerald did not know what it had been about.  She had not remembered the lieutenant or her father’s vexation, or any phase of the incident which was now closed.  Nothing remained of it but the lieutenant’s right, which he gravely exercised, of saluting them respectfully whenever he met them.

VII

Earlier, Lanfear had never allowed himself to be far out of call from Miss Gerald’s father, especially during the daytime slumbers into which she fell, and from which they both always dreaded her awakening.  But as the days went on and the event continued the same he allowed himself greater range.  Formerly the three went their walks or drives together, but now he sometimes went alone.  In these absences he found relief from the stress of his constant vigilance; he was able to cast off the bond which enslaves the physician to his patient, and which he must ignore at times for mere self-preservation’s sake; but there was always a lurking anxiety, which, though he refused to let it define itself to him, shortened the time and space he tried to put between them.