“My dear, what a very foolish question!” answered Alexander, with some emphasis. “We have often talked about it. How in the world should I know any better than any one else? Uncle Robert is a secretive man. He never told me anything.”
“Because there are the Ralstons, you know,” pursued Mrs. Lauderdale. “After all, they’re just as near as you are, in the way of relationship.”
“My father is the elder—older than uncle Robert,” said Alexander. “Katharine Ralston’s father was the youngest of the three.”
“Does that make a difference?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale.
“It ought to!” Alexander answered, energetically.
CHAPTER II.
“I’M not dying, I tell you! Don’t bother me, Routh!”
Robert Lauderdale turned impatiently on his side as he spoke, and pointed to a chair with one of his big, old hands. Doctor Routh, an immensely tall, elderly man, with a long grey beard and violet blue eyes, laughed a little under his breath, and sat down.
“I’m not at all sure that you are going to die,” he said, pleasantly.
“That’s a comfort, at all events,” answered the sick man, in a husky voice, but quite distinctly. “What the deuce made you say I was going to die, if I wasn’t?”