"Miss Lester, you look thin and pale," the doctor said very abruptly; he did not mean to say it, the words came almost involuntarily.
"Yes, this has been a wearing time for all of us; I am glad it is nearly over. Here we are. Mrs. Edgar, this is Philip's friend and mine, Dr. James."
The doctor received the kindest greeting, and was overpowered with questions about his mother, who had been a school friend of Mrs. Edgar, and his sisters. He tried to answer them intelligibly, thinking, however, only of Miss Lester, and conscious that she had turned away to be polite to other guests. Mrs. Edgar then introduced him to Jessie's sister Isabel, a fresh little girl of sixteen, who looked full of fun and mischief, and she in turn presented him to a friend, a tall young lady, who immediately began to talk to him so fast that he could hardly keep up with her. Mrs. Edgar suggested that he should get some ice-cream for himself and them, and then occupied herself with other people, considering that her duties of hospitality to him were performed. Dr. James went obediently into the next room and returned, after some difficulties, with ices and cake, and did his best to be polite. Soon Isabel was sent into the other room to see about the children, and the talkative young lady became engaged in conversation with an equally voluble young gentleman, so that Dr. James found himself again alone. He put down his untasted cake, and seeing a glass of wine near him, which seemed to belong to no one, he drank it and felt rather better. The solitariness one sometimes feels in a crowd came over him, and he looked from one strange face to another, feeling himself completely out of place. Mrs. Edgar was absorbed in duties of hospitality; Jessie and Philip in the distance, during a pause in the stream of guests, were engrossed in each other; even Margaret seemed to have completely forgotten him, and he saw her earnestly talking with her handsome groomsman. He regretted that he had refused to be a groomsman; no doubt he would have been assigned to Margaret, as the corresponding "best friend," and then she would have been talking to him instead of to that fellow; from which it will be seen that he had already arrived at a stage of lover-like inconsistency, since his sole motive for declining his friend's invitation had been his dread of encountering Miss Lester.
He saw that many people were going, and it came to him as a happy thought that he might go too. He interrupted Mrs. Edgar to shake hands again with her, observed that Margaret was near the door, and next made his way to Philip, with whom he had a little talk, unsatisfactory, of course, but one's best friend must be excused for being preoccupied on such an occasion. Philip parted from him with resignation, saying that he must come to California and settle, that he would do splendidly there and make a fortune. Such a prospect seemed to the doctor dreary in the extreme; and owning to himself that he did not at all begrudge to Philip his pretty and delicate bride, he bade her a friendly farewell, and approached Margaret. He was glad to interrupt the groomsman in the sotto voce remarks he was making, and to have Margaret turn at once to him and leave her companion to his own reflections.
"Good-by, Miss Lester. I go back to Sealing this afternoon."
"Good-by, Dr. James. I am very glad you came." That was all; how soon these words were said! Again he met the straightforward look of those clear, brown eyes; again he felt the kind pressure of her hand. Her glove was off and so was his, (not accident on his part,) and he felt that her hand was cold. He was on the point of saying, "How pale you are!" but remembered just in time, that he had made that remark before.
In another minute he was outside the door, and driving to the hotel. As he drew his tight boots from his aching feet, and resumed his comfortable, familiar clothes, he said to himself,
"This episode in my life is closed. I must shut her completely out of my existence, and go on as if there were no such woman as Margaret Lester."
So he took the five o'clock train, and arrived safely in Sealing that night.