"You'll do it no more," the Doctor replied. He drew out his pocket-book. "Mr. Richling, will you please send me through the mail, or bring me, your note for fifty dollars,--at your leisure, you know,--payable on demand?" He rummaged an instant in the pocket-book, and extended his hand with a folded bank-note between his thumb and finger. But Richling compressed his lips and shook his head, and the two men stood silently confronting each other. Mary laid her hand upon her husband's shoulder and leaned against him, with her eyes on the Doctor's face. "Come, Richling,"--the Doctor smiled,--"your friend Ristofalo did not treat you in this way." "I never treated Ristofalo so," replied Richling, with a smile tinged with bitterness. It was against himself that he felt bitter; but the Doctor took it differently, and Richling, seeing this, hurried to correct the impression. "I mean I lent him no such amount as that." "It was just one-fiftieth of that," said Mary. "But you gave liberally, without upbraiding," said the Doctor. "Oh, no, Doctor! no!" exclaimed she, lifting the hand that lay on her husband's near shoulder and reaching it over to the farther one. "Oh! a thousand times no! John never meant that. Did you, John?" "How could I?" said John. "No!" Yet there was confession in his look. He had not meant it, but he had felt it. Dr. Sevier sat down, motioned them into their seats, drew the arm-chair close to theirs. Then he spoke. He spoke long, and as he had not spoken anywhere but at the bedside scarce ever in his life before. The young husband and wife forgot that he had ever said a grating word. A soft love-warmth began to fill them through and through. They seemed to listen to the gentle voice of an older and wiser brother. A hand of Mary sank unconsciously upon a hand of John. They smiled and assented, and smiled, and assented, and Mary's eyes brimmed up with tears, and John could hardly keep his down. The Doctor made the whole case so plain and his propositions so irresistibly logical that the pair looked from his eyes to each other's and laughed. "Cozumel!" They did not utter the name; they only thought of it both at one moment. It never passed their lips again. Their visitor brought them to an arrangement. The fifty dollars were to be placed to John's credit on the books kept by Narcisse, as a deposit from Richling, and to be drawn against by him in such littles as necessity might demand. It was to be "secured"--they all three smiled at that word--by Richling's note payable on demand. The Doctor left a prescription for the refractory chills.