“Perhaps,” said the doctor, who loved a paradox. “I tell you what,” he added briskly, “let me go and see this lady. I am very suspicious about her. I should like to make her out a little before risking it for Dora, even with you.” “You think, perhaps, you would make it out better than I should,” said Miss Bethune, with some scorn. “Well, there is no saying. You would, no doubt, make out what is the matter with her, which is always the first thing that interests you.” “It explains most things, when you know how to read it,” the doctor said; but in this point his opponent did not give in to him, it is hardly necessary to say. She was very much interested about Dora, but she was still more interested in the question which moved her own heart so deeply. The lady from South America might be in command of many facts on that point; and prudence seemed to argue that it was best to see and understand a little more about her first, before taking Dora, without her father’s knowledge, to a stranger who made such a claim upon her. “Though if it is her mother’s sister, I don’t know who could have a stronger claim upon her,” said Miss Bethune. “Provided her mother had a sister,” the doctor said. CHAPTER XV. Miss Bethune set out accordingly, without saying anything further, to see the invalid. She took nobody into her confidence, not even Gilchrist, who had much offended her mistress by her scepticism. Much as she was interested in every unusual chain of circumstances, and much more still in anything happening to Dora Mannering, there was a still stronger impulse of personal feeling in her present expedition. It had gone to her head like wine; her eyes shone, and there was a nervous energy in every line of her tall figure in its middle-aged boniness and hardness. She walked quickly, pushing her way forward when there was any crowd with an unconscious movement, as of a strong swimmer dividing the waves. Her mind was tracing out every line of the supposed process of events known to herself alone. It was her own story, and such a strange one as occurs seldom in the almost endless variety of strange stories that are about the world--a story of secret marriage, secret birth, and sudden overwhelming calamity. She had as a young woman given herself foolishly and hastily to an adventurer: for she was an heiress, if she continued to please an old uncle who had her fate in his hands. The news of the unexpected approach of this old man brought the sudden crisis. The husband, who had been near her in the profound quiet of the country, fled, taking with him the child, and after that no more. The marriage was altogether unknown, except to Gilchrist, and a couple of old servants in the small secluded country-house where the strange little tragedy had taken place; and the young wife, who had never borne her husband’s name, came to life again after a long illness, to find every trace of her piteous story, and of the fate of the man for whom