Toni, for her part, was occupied in thanking the Providence which had seen fit to equip her with a set of perfectly sound white teeth; and she felt an intense sympathy with the hapless Eva, whose nerves, undermined by her late experience, were already betraying her into signs of agitation.
"I won't hurt you, really," said Mr. Dowson, with a beaming smile, which he felt to be out of place, but could not restrain. "Please lean back a little more—so. Now open—just a leetle wider—thank you, that will do."
It was soon evident that the visit could not be prolonged. Although he had not the clue to his patient's intense nervousness, Mr. Dowson's professional instincts warned him that he must go warily: and while he would willingly have detained Mrs. Herrick, if by such means he could enjoy the felicity of Toni's companionship a little longer, his conscientious spirit forced him to cut the sitting short.
Another appointment was made for the following week; and after that there were others, to all of which Toni accompanied her quaking friend. After four or five visits, however, Toni was unlucky enough to contract a chill during an unusually prolonged motor-ride; and Mrs. Herrick was forced to go alone.
It was Leonard Dowson's intense consternation when told of Toni's illness which first opened Eva's eyes to the seriousness of his devotion. She had seen from the beginning that he admired the girl, that he listened attentively to her lightest word; but she had not realized that Mr. Dowson was really and irrevocably in love with Toni; and it is only fair to the young man to say that he was quite unconscious of his self-betrayal.
He had not been able to hide his anxiety on hearing of Toni's indisposition. With all the exaggeration of true love he immediately feared the worst; and even Eva's callous heart was touched by his incapacity to ask for news on the day of her second visit alone.
He had stammered out a broken question, exhibiting a rather absurd concern over an ordinary slight chill; and when Eva replied casually that she had heard Toni was going on very well, she noticed, with a half-contemptuous amusement, that he had to turn aside and wipe away the drops which glistened on his high forehead.
It was during that second visit that an idea came to Eva, bringing a malicious little smile to her lips in the intervals of Leonard's ministrations.
"You've known Toni—Mrs. Rose—a long time, I suppose?" She asked the question casually as she put on her hat before the glass. "You were friends before her marriage, weren't you?"
"Yes. I had the pleasure of knowing Mrs. Rose some years before that."