Eleanor's arm was about her at once. "Sweet, I was only wondering that Cecilia let you!"
"Cecilia did not let me; and you were wondering, too, why I stayed, what really kept me. You are quite right; of my own accord I shouldn't have stayed. My own impulse would not have moved that way. I should have taken the easy, the obvious course, if I had been left to choose. But I wasn't, you see."
Eleanor looked at her keenly. This note of bitterness was quite new. Suddenly she remembered Ogilvie; but almost on the instant Rosamund spoke again.
"What manner of man do you find this red-headed doctor of yours?"
Eleanor laughed. "He gets his own way with people!" She looked at her friend, but Rosamund's face was turned from her. "I have never met anyone else like him. I thought at first that he was two people—a man of heart and a man of science; you know his reputation, and yet he stays up here mainly, I am told, to be near these mountain people. He says that they trust him, and seems to think that excuse enough for staying."
"I thought he stayed for the air or something?"
"He did, but now he is perfectly well again. And his character is not dual; nothing so romantic. He is a man of science just because he is a man of heart. He is one of the simplest people I have ever known."
"You seem to know him pretty well."
"Oh, he is the first object of interest to all his patients; we talk of nothing else! I am only a case to him."
Rosamund laughed. "Very likely, dear! And what does he think of you, as a case?"