Then Dwight begged that Mrs. Ray should come to him, and there had been a long talk, a reconciliation, an understanding that brought comfort to his heart and rejoicing to hers, and then as convalescence advanced, and his mind demanded food, Priscilla had come to read to him, and from reading, first rather less than an hour, she was reading daily now as much as two. It gave Madame a frightful _migraine_, said the explanatory and fruitful Félicie, to read aloud at all. But the projected alliance, the prospective friendship so desired by Mrs. Dwight of the elder--the highly gifted--maid had progressed no further. From the moment of their return from that memorable drive neither party to the proposed arrangement again referred to it. Priscilla, who preferred to call at any other house within the limits of Minneconjou, was now a daily visitor. Sandy Ray, who found himself longing to go thither, could not go at all. His arrest forbade it, and he was asking himself what might be his course were his arrest to end, for a rumor was current at the post that a separation was threatened--that Captain and Mrs. Dwight were certainly estranged. There were those who considered it most indelicate under the circumstances that an unmarried woman should appear upon the scene even as a reader to an aging and broken man. Perhaps it was, but the doctor smiled approval. The colonel said "Go ahead." Mrs. Ray considered her niece quite old enough to judge for herself. Mrs. Dwight declared it angelic, and Priscilla said nothing at all. Priscilla, who had been prone to speak on slight reflection, had become as silent or secretive as she had once been censorious, for never once had she mentioned to her aunt, never yet had she made known to Sandy, that she had heard the strange words which, with returning consciousness, Inez, the wife of Oswald Dwight, had murmured looking up into the pallid face of Sanford Ray. Yet Ray knew, and soon Inez, that Priscilla had heard and not forgotten.