“I’ve just come from another patient of mine, and I promised to ask if you had not crossed on the same ship with a brother of hers,—­Mr. Milray.”

Celementina and Mrs. Lander looked guiltily at each other.  “I guess we did,” Mrs. Lander owned at last, with a reluctant sigh.

“Then, she says you have a letter for her.”

The doctor spoke to both, but his looks confessed that he was not ignorant of the fact when Mrs. Lander admitted, “Well Clementina, he’e, has.”

“She wants to know why you haven’t delivered it,” the doctor blurted out.

Mrs. Lander looked at Clementina.  “I guess she ha’n’t quite got round to it yet, have you, Clementina?”

The doctor put in:  “Well, Miss Milray is rather a dangerous person to keep waiting.  If you don’t deliver it pretty soon, I shouldn’t be surprised if she came to get it.”  Dr. Welwright was a young man in the early thirties, with a laugh that a great many ladies said had done more than any one thing for them, and he now prescribed it for Clementina.  But it did not seem to help her in the trouble her face betrayed.

Mrs. Lander took the word, “Well, I wouldn’t say it to everybody.  But you’re our doctor, and I guess you won’t mind it.  We don’t like the way Mrs. Milray acted to Clementina, in the ship, and we don’t want to be beholden to any of her folks.  I don’t know as Clementina wants me to tell you just what it was, and I won’t; but that’s the long and sho’t of it.”

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said.  “I’ve never met Mrs. Milray, but Miss Milray has such a pleasant house, and likes to get young people about her.  There are a good many young people in your hotel, though, and I suppose you all have a very good time here together.”  He ended by speaking to Clementina, and now he said he had done his errand, and must be going.

When he was gone, Mrs. Lander faltered, “I don’t know but what we made a mistake, Clementina.”

“It’s too late to worry about it now,” said the girl.

“We ha’n’t bound to stay in Florence,” said Mrs. Lander, thoughtfully.  “I only took the rooms by the week, and we can go, any time, Clementina, if you are uncomf’table bein’ here on Miss Milray’s account.  We could go to Rome; they say Rome’s a nice place; or to Egypt.”

“Mrs. Milray’s in Egypt,” Clementina suggested.

“That’s true,” Mrs. Lander admitted, with a sigh.  After a while she went on, “I don’t know as we’ve got any right to keep the letter.  It belongs to her, don’t it?”

“I guess it belongs to me, as much as it does to her,” said Clementina.  “If it’s to her, it’s for me.  I am not going to send it, Mrs. Landa.”

They were still in this conclusion when early in the following afternoon Miss Milray’s cards were brought up for Mrs. Lander and Miss Claxon.

“Well, I decla’e!” cried Mrs. Lander.  “That docta:  must have gone straight and told her what we said.”