There were two things he held dearer than life—the honor of the old family name that had come down to him unspotted through generations, and his little home-loving wife. For fifteen years he had experienced as much of the happiness of home-life as a physician with a large practice can know. Then word came to him from another city that his only brother had killed a man in a drunken brawl, and then taken his own life, leaving nothing but the memory of a wild career and a heavy debt. He had borrowed a large amount from an unsuspecting old aunt, and left her almost penniless.
When Dr. Trent recovered from the first shock of the discovery, he quietly set to work to wipe out the disgraceful record as far as lay in his power, by assuming the debt. He could eradicate at least that much of the stain on the family name. It had taken years to do it. Bethany was not sure that it was yet accomplished, for another trial, worse than the first, had come to weaken his strength and dispel his courage.
The idolized little wife became affected by some nervous malady that resulted in hopeless insanity.
Bethany had a dim recollection of the doctor's daughter, a little brown-eyed child of her own age. She could remember playing hide-and-seek with her one day in an old peony-garden. But she had died years ago. There was only one other child—Lee. He had grown to be a big boy of ten now, but he was too young to feel his mother's loss at the time she was taken away. Bethany knew that she was still living in a private asylum near town, and that the doctor saw her every day, no matter how violent she was. Lee was the one bright spot left in his life. Busy night and day with his patients, he saw very little of the boy. The child had never known any home but a boarding-house, and was as lawless and unrestrained as some little wild animal. But the doctor saw no fault in him. He praised the reports brought home from school of high per cents in his studies, knowing nothing of his open defiance to authority. He kissed the innocent-looking face on the pillow next his own when he came in late at night, never dreaming of the forbidden places it had been during the day.
Everybody said, "Poor Baxter Trent! It's a pity that Lee is such a little terror;" but no one warned him. Perhaps he would not have believed them if they had. The thought of all this moved Bethany to sudden speech.
"Uncle Doctor," she broke out impetuously—she had unconsciously used the old name—as she sat down on a low stool near his knee, "I was piling up my troubles to-night before you came. Not the old ones," she added, quickly, as she saw an expression of sympathy cross his face, "but the new ones that confront me."
She gave a mournful little smile.
"'Coming events cast their shadow before,' you know, and these shadows look so dark and threatening. I see no possible way but to sell this home. You have had so much to bear yourself that it seems mean to worry you with my troubles; but I don't know what to do, and I don't know what's the matter with me—"
She stopped abruptly, and choked back a sob. He laid his hand softly on her shining hair.
"Tell me all about it, child," he said, in a soothing tone. Then he added, lightly, "I can't make a diagnosis of the case until I know all the symptoms."