"You are aware that I know, and have known all along, the present relations of my friend Treherne with your family?" "I had rather not discuss that subject, Doctor Urquhart." "No, but it will account for my asking questions about Captain Treherne. He left me this morning in a state of the greatest excitement. And at his age, with his temperament, there is no knowing to what a young man may not be driven." "At present, I believe, to nothing worse than the Cedars, with my sister as his charioteer." "You are satirical." "I am exceedingly obliged to you." Dr. Urquhart regarded me with a sort of benignant smile, as if I were a naughty child, whose naughtiness partly grieved, and partly amused him. "If, in warrant of my age and my profession, you will allow me a few words of serious conversation with you, I, in my turn, shall be exceedingly obliged." "You are welcome." "Even if I speak about your sister and Captain Treherne?" There he roused me. "Doctor Urquhart, I do not see that you have the slightest right to interfere about my sister and Captain Treherne. He may choose to make you his confidant--I shall not: and I think very meanly of any man who brings a third person, either as umpire or go-between, betwixt himself and the woman he professes to love." Doctor Urquhart looked at me again fixedly, with that curious, half-melancholy smile, before he spoke. "At least, let me beg of you to believe one thing--I am not that go-between." He was so very gentle with me in my wrath, that, perforce, I could not be angry. I turned homeward, and he turned with me; but I was determined not to give him another syllable. Nevertheless, he spoke. "Since we have said thus much, may I be allowed one word more? This matter has begun to give me extreme uneasiness. It is doing Treherne much harm. He is an only son, the son of his father's old age: on him much hope rests. He is very young--I never knew him to be serious in anything before. He is serious in his attachment--I mean in his ardent desire to marry your sister." "You think so? We are deeply indebted to him." "My dear young lady, when we are talking on a matter so important, and which concerns you so nearly, it is a pity to reply in that tone." To be reproved in this way by a man and a stranger! I was so astonished that it made me dumb. He continued:-- "You are aware that, for the present, Sir William's consent has been refused?" "I am aware of it." "And indignant, probably. Yet there are two sides to the subject. It is rather trying to an old man, when his son writes suddenly, and insists upon bringing home a daughter-in-law, however charming, in six weeks; natural, too, that the father should urge,--'Take time to consider, my dear boy.'" "Very natural."