Finally he said:
“Mrs. Marston, pray do not let me keep you standing; come into my private office and be seated; we can converse much more comfortably there and be free from intrusion, if customers should come in.”
Mrs. Marston shivered slightly, although the day was an unusually warm one. She did not wish to talk over the long-buried past, and this recognition had been a bitter blow to her; but her curiosity regarding her child’s fate was so great that she could not resist the physician’s invitation, and she followed him to a small room beautifully fitted up as a consulting office, at the rear of the store.
Doctor Turner politely handed her a luxurious chair, and then seated himself opposite her.
“It is doubtless a great surprise to you to find me situated as I am,” the physician remarked, by way of opening the conversation; “but some years ago my health gave out under the strain of a large and constantly increasing practice, and I was forced to relinquish it, although I still receive some office patients.”
Mrs. Marston merely bowed in reply to this information, her manner indicating that she cared very little about Doctor Turner’s personal history.
She glanced at August Damon’s card, which she had recovered when Doctor Turner relinquished it.
“You were going to tell me the real name of the person whom this card represents, I believe,” she said.
The druggist smiled, yet bit his lip with vexation at himself for having intruded his own affairs upon her, even for the purpose of making her feel more at her ease. He might have spared himself that trouble.
“That will depend entirely upon your motive in seeking them,” he replied.