“Yesser, Marse Wynn,” the woman answered over the coffee-tray she was putting down, “I sent Lindy up dar to her room, and she say young miss didn't want er bite. I reckon she sho' is sick. She haint tetch er mouthful since 'er breakfast.”
“Well, let her alone,” Dearing said, as his eyes met the wavering glance of his uncle across the table. “She will be all right in the morning.”
The gloomy meal over, the General strode back to the veranda, and Wynn went up to his room. He did not light the gas, as he intended doing, for it occurred to him that there was really no need for it, and he sat down in the darkness. He could see one of the windows of Margaret's room in the ell of the building, across the open court. A dim light was burning there, and the curtains were drawn.
“Poor child!” he muttered; “that fellow has hit her hard. Women have a wonderful amount of sympathy for him. It may be that Mrs. Barry is correct in her fears, and that Dora may be in love with him, too. Beautiful, trusting Dora—even she is suffering on his account. Yes, I must see him. There is no other way.” Dearing stood up and went to his bureau to get a fresh handkerchief, and while his hand was fumbling collars, cuffs, and neckties, it touched the cool, smooth handle of a revolver. He picked it up and held it for a moment reflectively, and then laid it down.
“No, I'll not go to see him even with the thought that I may have to use force,” he said. “My mission in life is to cure men, not to spill their blood. They say he sometimes goes armed, and if we met on that sort of level there might be trouble.”
He closed the drawer, stood for a moment looking at the light in the window of Margaret's room, and then, shrugging his broad shoulders, he turned away. He met no one on the stairs, but as he passed out at the front door he saw the flare of his uncle's cigar and the wrinkled, brooding face and gray head and beard at the end of the veranda. Going down the wide brick walk, which was edged by rows of well-trimmed boxwood, he descried, near the gate, a willowy figure in white. It was Margaret. She looked up as he approached, and in the piteous lines of her face he read her final desperate appeal.
“I thought you were in your room,” he said, in an effort at gentle deception. “Madge, old girl, I'll have to take you in hand.” He passed his fingers playfully under her cold chin. “You are on a direct road to a thirty-day course of that very tonic you despised so much last spring. No dinner to-day and no supper to-night. I don't get any fee for doctoring you, but I'm going to keep you in good shape as an advertisement, if for nothing else. I don't intend to have my patients throwing it in my face that they won't believe in me until I cure my own family.”
She did not return his smile, and drew back from his caress as if she half resented it.
“Are you really going to see Fred?” she asked, falteringly, her eyes fixed coldly, half fearfully, on his through the dim, vague starlight.
“Yes, Madge,” he answered, simply. “I've thought it over deliberately and calmly, with no feeling of ill-will toward him, and I can't see my duty in any other way.”