'Not that he cared,' she said, rather proudly and contemptuously, one hushed evening that the Doctor was trying to soothe her into quietude. 'No, no. Ronald care what a conceited scribbling schoolboy said about him? No! I should think not. Perhaps he never knew—indeed, I think he never knew. He never knew that all our friends in Chicago were asked to look on and see him lectured, and patronised, and examined. Oh! so clever the newspaper-writer was—with his airs of criticism and patronage! But the coward that he was—the coward—to strike in the dark—to sit in his little den and strike in the dark! Why didn't Jack Huysen drag him out? Why didn't he make him sign his name, that we could tell who this was with his braggart airs? The coward! Why, Ronald would have felled him! No! no! He would not have looked the way the poor pretentious fool was going. He would have laughed. Doctor, do you know who he was? Did you ever meet him?'
'But who, Miss Carry?' he said, as he patted her hot hand.
She looked at him wonderingly.
'Why, don't you know? Did you never hear? The miserable creature that was allowed to speak ill of our Ronald. Ah! do you think I have forgotten? Does Jack Huysen think I have forgotten? No, I will not forget—you can tell him, I will not forget—I will not forget—I will not forget—'
She was growing more and more vehement; and to pacify her he had to assure her that he himself would see this matter put straight; and that it was all right, and that ample amends would be made.
Of course, he paid no great attention to these delirious wanderings; but that same evening, when he had gone into the smoking-room to report to Jack Huysen how things were going, this complaint of Miss Carry's happened to recur to his mind.
'Look here, Jack, what's this that she's always talking about—seems to worry her a good deal—some newspaper article—and you're mixed up in it, too—something you appear to have said or done about that fellow her father took such a fancy for—I mean, when they were in Scotland——'
'Oh, I know,' said the editor, and he blushed to the very roots of his long-flowing hair. 'I know. But it's an old story. It's all forgotten now.'
'Well, it is not,' the young Doctor said 'and that's the fact. She worries about it continually. Very strange, now, how her mind just happened to take that bent. I don't remember that we were talking much about the Scotch Highlands. But they must have been in her head when she fell ill; and now it's nothing else. Well, what is it about the newspaper article, anyway?'
'Why, nothing to make a fuss about,' Jack Huysen said, but rather uneasily. 'I thought it was all forgotten. She said as much. Wonder you don't remember the article—suppose you missed it—but it was about this same Highland fellow, and some verses of his—it was young Regan wrote it—confound him, I'd have kicked him into Lake Michigan before I let him write a line in the paper, if I'd have known there was going to be this trouble about it. And I don't think now there was much to find fault with—I only glanced over it before sending it to her, and it seemed to me favourable enough—of course, there was a little of the de haut en bas business—you know how young fellows like to write—but it was favourable—very favourable, I should say—however, she chose to work up a pretty high old row on the strength of it when she came home, and I had my work cut out for me before I could pacify her. Why, you don't say she's at that again? Women are such curious creatures; they hold on to things so; I wonder, now, why it is she takes such an interest in that fellow—after all this time?'