A shadow of quick pain crossed the other's face.
"I know. And that's another thing that grieved dad. He was fond of his little granddaughter. He used to speak of her, often, till I begged him not to. She's mine, of course; but she's Helen's, too,—and she is being brought up by Helen—not me. I can imagine what she's being taught—about her father," he finished bitterly.
"Oh, but I'm sure— I know she's—" With a painful color the doctor, suddenly warned from within just in time, came to a frightened pause.
Burke, however, lifting a protesting hand, changed the subject abruptly; and the relieved doctor was glad, for once, not to have him wish to talk longer of his missing wife and daughter.
Very soon the doctor said good-night and left the house. But his heart was heavy.
"Perhaps, after all," he sighed to himself, "it wasn't just the time to get him to listen to reason about Helen—when it was his runaway marriage that had so grieved his father years ago; and his father now—just gone."
From many lips, before he left town the next morning, Dr. Gleason learned much of the life and doings of the Denbys during the past few years. Perhaps the death of John Denby had made the Dalton tongues garrulous. At all events they were nothing loath to talk; and the doctor, eager to obtain anything that would enable him to understand Burke Denby, was nothing loath to listen.
"Yes, sir, he hain't been well for years—John Denby hain't," related one old man into the doctor's attentive, sympathetic ears. "And I ain't sayin' I wonder, with all he's been through. But you said you was a friend of his, didn't ye?"
The doctor inclined his head.
"I am, indeed, an old friend of the family."