After a while she dried her eyes and looked up at him timidly but with restored confidence.

“People need never know now!” she said more calmly.

“People?  Do people matter?”

She picked a daisy and began nervously to strip it of its petals—­a pang of agony caught at the man’s heart.  So, only that morning, had he imagined himself consulting the daisy oracle.  “She loves me, she loves me not.”  Absolutely he put the memory from him.  Molly was speaking.

“People do matter.  They make things so unpleasant.  Not that I care as much about them as I used to; but still, one has to be careful.  People are so prying, always wanting to know things,” she glanced around nervously, “but let’s not talk about them.  I don’t understand things yet.  How did you find me, if you thought I was—­dead?”

“Accident, if there be such a thing.  I was driving down the road.  I am living in the town near here—­in Coombe!”

“But you can’t!  I live in Coombe.  It is my home.  There isn’t a Chedridge in the place.”

“My name is not Chedridge now.  I took my uncle’s name when I inherited his money.  I am called Henry Callandar.”

“Callandar!” Her voice rose shrilly on the word.  “And you are living in Coombe?  Why you are—­you must be—­Esther’s Dr. Callandar!”

The man went deathly white, yet his enormous self-control, the fruit of years, held him steady.

Mary Coombe began to laugh weakly.  “Why, of course, that explains it all, don’t you see?  Haven’t you placed me yet?  Esther is my step-daughter.  The man I married was Doctor Coombe.”

“Good God!” The exclamation was revelation enough had Mary Coombe heard it.  But she did not hear it; this new aspect of the situation had seemed to her so farcical that her laughter threatened to become hysterical.  “Oh, it’s so funny!” she gasped.

It was certainly funny—­such a good joke!  The Doctor thought he might as well laugh too.  But at the sound of his laughter, hers abruptly ceased.

“Don’t do that!”

He tried to control himself.  It was hard.  He wanted to shriek with laughter.  Esther’s step-mother, the mysterious Mrs. Coombe, was Molly—­his wife!  Some mocking demon shouted into his ears the words he had intended to say to her when he came to tell her that he and Esther loved each other.  He thought of his own high mood of the morning, of the tender regret which he had laid away with the dead of the dead past.  It seemed as if all the world were rocking with diabolic laughter—­Fate plans such amusing things!

He caught himself up—­madness lay that way.