He found her greatly weakened by it the next day, and he sat looking thoughtfully at her before he said that she needed toning up.  She caught at the notion.  “Yes, yes!  That’s what I need, docta!  Toning up!  That’s what I need.”

He suggested, “How would you like to try the sea air, and the baths—­at Venice?”

“Oh, anything, anywhere, to get out of this dreadful hole!  I ha’n’t had a well minute since I came.  And Clementina,” the sick woman whimpered, “is so taken up all the time, he’a, that I can’t get the right attention.”

The doctor looked compassionately away from the girl, and said, “Well, we must arrange about getting you off, then.”

“But I want you should go with me, doctor, and see me settled all right.  You can, can’t you?  I sha’n’t ca’e how much it costs?”

The doctor said gravely he thought he could manage it and he ignored the long unconscious sigh of relief that Clementina drew.

In all her confusing anxieties for Mrs. Lander, Gregory remained at the bottom of her heart a dumb ache.  When the pressure of her fears was taken from her she began to suffer for him consciously; then a letter came from him: 

“I cannot make it right.  It is where it was, and I feel that I must not see you again.  I am trying to do right, but with the fear that I am wrong.  Send some word to help me before I go away to-morrow.  F. G.”

It was what she had expected, she knew now, but it was none the less to be borne because of her expectation.  She wrote back: 

   “I believe you are doing the best you can, and I shall always
   believe that.”

Her note brought back a long letter from him.  He said that whatever he did, or wherever he went, he should try to be true to her ideal of him.  If they renounced their love now for the sake of what seemed higher than their love, they might suffer, but they could not choose but do as they were doing.

Clementina was trying to make what she could of this when Miss Milray’s name came up, and Miss Milray followed it.

“I wanted to ask after Mrs. Lander, and I want you to tell her I did.  Will you?  Dr. Welwright says he’s going to take her to Venice.  Well, I’m sorry—­sorry for your going, Clementina, and I’m truly sorry for the cause of it.  I shall miss you, my dear, I shall indeed.  You know I always wanted to steal you, but you’ll do me the justice to say I never did, and I won’t try, now.”

“Perhaps I wasn’t worth stealing,” Clementina suggested, with a ruefulness in her smile that went to Miss Milray’s heart.

She put her arms round her and kissed her.  I wasn’t very kind to you, the other day, Clementina, was I?”

“I don’t know,” Clementina faltered, with half-averted face.

“Yes, you do!  I was trying to make-believe that I didn’t want to meddle with your affairs; but I was really vexed that you hadn’t told me your story before.  It hasn’t taken me all this time to reflect that you couldn’t, but it has to make myself come and confess that I had been dry and cold with you.”  She hesitated.  “It’s come out all right, hasn’t it, Clementina?” she asked, tenderly.  “You see I want to meddle, now.”