"You see how it is!" "Yes, I saw how it was before. But what do you wish to do?" "Do you mean that he will keep it up?" "Decidedly, he'll keep it up. He has every right to from his point of view." "Oh, well, then, my dear fellow, you must stop it, somehow. You'll know how to do it." "I?" said Lanfear, indignantly; but his vexation was not so great that he did not feel a certain pleasure in fulfilling this strangest part of his professional duty, when at the beginning of their next excursion he put Miss Gerald into the victoria with her father and fell back to the point at which he had seen the lieutenant waiting to haunt their farther progress. He put himself plumply in front of the officer and demanded in very blunt Italian: "What do you want?" The lieutenant stared him over with potential offence, in which his delicately pencilled mustache took the shape of a light sneer, and demanded in his turn, in English much better than Lanfear's Italian: "What right have you to ask?" "The right of Miss Gerald's physician. She is an invalid in my charge." A change quite indefinable except as the visible transition from coxcomb to gentleman passed over the young lieutenant's comely face. "An invalid?" he faltered. "Yes," Lanfear began; and then, with a rush of confidence which the change in the officer's face justified, "one very strangely, very tragically afflicted. Since she saw her mother killed in an accident a year ago she remembers nothing. She bowed to you because she saw you looking at her, and supposed you must be an acquaintance. May I assure you that you are altogether mistaken?" The lieutenant brought his heels together, and bent low. "I beg her pardon with all my heart. I am very, very sorry. I will do anything I can. I would like to stop that. May I bring my mother to call on Miss Gerald?" He offered his hand, and Lanfear wrung it hard, a lump of gratitude in his throat choking any particular utterance, while a fine shame for his late hostile intention covered him. When the lieutenant came, with all possible circumstance, bringing the countess, his mother, Mr. Gerald overwhelmed them with hospitality of every form. The Italian lady responded effusively, and more sincerely cooed and murmured her compassionate interest in his daughter. Then all parted the best of friends; but when it was over, Miss Gerald did not know what it had been about. She had not remembered the lieutenant or her father's vexation, or any phase of the incident which was now closed. Nothing remained of it but the lieutenant's right, which he gravely exercised, of saluting them respectfully whenever he met them. VII