“For one thing, I said that he had every comfort
and attention two loving women and one fond nurse
could give him; but that, of course, his legitimate
wife would naturally be glad to be beside him when
he passed away, and that if she made haste she might
be here in time.”
The Young Doctor leaned against a tree shaking with
laughter.
“What are you smiling at?” Kitty asked
ironically. “Oh, she’ll be sure to
come—nothing will keep her away after being
coaxed like that!” he said, when he could get
breath.
“Laughing at me as though I was a clown in a
circus!” she exclaimed. “Laughing
when, as you say yourself, the man that she—the
cat—wrote that fiendish letter to is in
trouble.”
“It was a fiendish letter, was it?” he
asked, suddenly sobered again. “No, no,
don’t tell me,” he added, with a protesting
gesture. “I don’t want to hear.
I don’t want to know. I oughtn’t to
know. Besides, if she comes, I don’t want
to be prejudiced against her. He is troubled,
poor fellow.”
“Of course he is. There’s the big
land deal—his syndicate. He’s
got a chance of making a fortune, and he can’t
do it because—but Jesse Bulrush told me
in confidence, so I can’t explain.”
“I have an idea, a pretty good idea. Askatoon
is small.”
“And mean sometimes.”
“Tell me what you know. Perhaps I can help
him,” urged the Young Doctor. “I
have helped more than one good man turn a sharp corner
here.”
She caught his arm. “You are as good as
gold.” “You are—impossible,”
he replied.
They talked of Crozier’s land deal and syndicate
as they walked slowly towards the house. Mrs.
Tynan met them at the door, a look of excitement in
her face. “A telegram for you Kitty,”
she said.
“For me!” exclaimed Kitty eagerly.
“It’s a year since I had one.”
She tore open the yellow envelope. A light shot
up in her face. She thrust the telegram into
the Young Doctor’s hands.
“She’s coming; his wife’s coming.
She’s in Quebec now. It was my letter—my
letter, not your cable, that brought her,” Kitty
added triumphantly.
NIGHT SHADE AND MORNING GLORY
It was as though Crozier had been told of the coming
of his wife, for when night came, on the day Kitty
had received her telegram, he could not sleep.
He was the sport of a consuming restlessness.
His brain would not be still. He could not discharge
from it the thoughts of the day and make it vacuous.
It would not relax. It seized with intentness
on each thing in turn, which was part of his life
at the moment, and gave it an abnormal significance.
In vain he tried to shake himself free of the successive
obsessions which stormed down the path of the night,
dragging him after them, a slave lashed to the wheels
of a chariot of flame.
