I glanced from the corner of my eye at Captain Carey.  He looked very grave, but his eyes could not rest upon Olivia without admiring her, as she stood before us, bright-faced, slender, erect, with the heavy folds of her coarse dress falling about her as gracefully as if they were of the richest material.

“This is my friend, Captain Carey, Miss Olivia,” I said, “in whose yacht I have come over to visit you.”

“I am very glad to see any friend of Dr. Martin’s,” she answered, as she hold out her hand to him with a smile; “my doctor and I are great friends, Captain Carey.”

“So I suppose,” he said, significantly—­or at least his tone and look seemed fraught with significance to me.

“We were talking of you only a few minutes ago, Dr. Martin,” she continued; “I was telling Tardif how you sang the ‘Three Fishers’ to me the last time you were here, and how it rings in my ears still, especially when he is away fishing.  I repeated the three last lines to him: 

’For men must work, and women must weep;
And the sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep. 
So good-by to the bar, with its moaning.’”

“I do not like it, doctor,” said Tardif:  “there’s no hope in it.  Yet to sleep out yonder at last, on the great plain under the sea, would be no bad thing.”

“You must sing it for Tardif,” added Olivia, with a pretty imperiousness, “and then he will like it.”

My throat felt dry, and my tongue parched.  I could not utter a word in reply.

“This would be the very place for such a song,” said Captain Carey.  “Come, Martin, let us have it.”

“No; I can sing nothing to-day,” I answered, harshly.

The very sight of her made me feel miserable beyond words; the sound of her voice maddened me.  I felt as if I was angry with her almost to hatred for her grace and sweetness; yet I could have knelt down at her feet, and been happy only to lay my hand on a fold of her dress.  No feeling had ever stirred me so before, and it made me irritable.  Olivia’s clear gray eyes looked at me wonderingly.

“Is there anything the matter with you, Dr. Martin?” she inquired.

“No,” I replied, turning away from her abruptly.  Every one of them felt my rudeness; and there was a dead silence among us for half a minute, which seemed an age to me.  Then I heard Captain Carey speaking in his suavest tones.

“Are you quite well again, Miss Ollivier?” he asked.

“Yes, quite well, I think,” she said, in a very subdued voice.  “I cannot walk far yet, and my arm is still weak:  but I think I am quite well.  I have given Dr. Martin a great deal of trouble and anxiety.”

She spoke in the low, quiet tones of a child who has been chidden unreasonably.  I was asking myself what Captain Carey meant by not leaving me alone with my patient.  When a medical man makes a call, the intrusion of any unprofessional, indifferent person is unpardonable.  If it had been Suzanne, Tardif, or Mother Renouf, who was keeping so close beside us, I could have made no reasonable objection.  But Captain Carey!