"Has Miss Callender seen your sister?"
"Yes; she did not tell you already?" queried Rudolph.
"I have not seen her for a long time," said Millard.
"Oh!" exclaimed Rudolph, and went no farther.
"Did she—did she not try to make your sister well?"
"Yes; but believing is all good enough for the back, but it is no good when you're real sick insides. You see it is consumption."
"Yes; I see," said Millard. A rush of feeling came over him. He remembered Mina Schulenberg as she sat that day about a year ago—the day of his engagement—near the bust of Beethoven in the park. She had been the beginning and in some sense she had been the ending of his engagement. Millard walked away from Rudolph in a preoccupied way. Suddenly he turned and called after him:
"I say—Schulenberg!"
The young man faced about and came back. Millard said to him in a low voice and with feeling: "Will you let me know if your sister dies? Come straight to me. Don't say anything about it, but maybe I can show myself a friend in some way. Here's my address at home, and between nine and three I'm at the Bank of Manhadoes."
Rudolph said yes, and tried to thank him, but Millard strode away, his mind reverting to the poor girl whose now fast-withering life seemed to have some occult relation to his own, and thinking, too, of Phillida's unfaltering ministrations. What mistakes and delusions could not be forgiven to one so unwearyingly good? Why did he not share her reproach with her, and leave her to learn by time and hard experience? Such thoughts stung him sorely. And this death, under her very hand, of the Schulenberg girl must be a sore trial. Would she learn from failure? Or would she resolutely pursue her course?