While Leonora could not comprehend the larger significance of his discourse, it gratified her pride and pleased her vanity that her fiancee was a man who could obtain such a hearing from the medical profession. The discussion that followed the address was animated and intelligent, and if the malcontents had intended any discourtesy to Dr. Earl their plans went awry. Dr. Earl found himself plunged deeper and deeper every day in the seemingly innumerable duties that crowded upon him. Summer came with tropical heat, but feeling that he had already enjoyed a long vacation, he made no plans, save to take his week-ends out of town, and prepared to keep office hours all summer. Early in July, Leonora and her mother went to Bar Harbor and the Ramseys to Newport. Frank had gone West in May. He would have missed them had he possessed a free moment, but the first of August found him as busy as ever, in spite of the fact that the city was deserted by the fashionable world. Sickness has fashions of its own, and the fame he had achieved as "the surgeon who cures without operating," brought him not a few calls from those who had nothing to commend them save their suffering and their faith. Every doctor worthy the name has a set of books kept only by his recording angel, and Earl's invisible guardian made many entries that summer, and there were times when even the insistence of Leonora could not make him feel willing to leave those who seemed so wholly dependent upon his presence for their physical welfare. Now and then, in spite of his all-absorbing work, there came to his sensitive consciousness a feeling of foreboding and dread that he could not explain, save by some subtle law of suggestion, as he recalled half in mirth and half in seriousness the dark prophecies of the astrologist at the suffrage ball. He had suspected his brother Frank, and when he learned that the seeress was Miss Renner, that suspicion had been confirmed; Frank might have given her the date of Leonora's birthday, but he had nothing to do with the warning she had given him that something would happen within the next twenty-four hours which would have a bearing on his whole career. Within two hours he had treated little Alice Bell, and out of that event had grown his more intimate acquaintance with Silvia, and the marked hostility of Dr. Morris. The child was doing as well as could be expected, but he was greatly disturbed over her condition, and was building up her general health in the hope of overcoming the disease. He had asked Miss Renner one or two questions, but she had evaded him, and while he had thought of calling on her and asking for the promised horoscope, which she did not send, the idea seemed absurd, and he had no time to carry it out. On the fourth of August he received a summons to come to Magnolia, Massachusetts, to attend a former patient who was spending the summer there, and he left New York, intending to remain a week.