"It certainly does," and Mrs. Wymans rose to go, and bid farewell to Mrs. Dorriman, who was conscious only of one terrible speech; was it true that Mr. Drayton did----that----and, if it was true, were they right in taking all for granted and leaving Margaret at his mercy? But for the doctor's prohibition she would have gone straight to her brother and laid her new anxieties before him. But she remembered that he was not to be agitated or excited, and she resolutely sat still till all her own excited thoughts became calmer. She took up her knitting and worked on mechanically, while this new responsibility made her feel as though nothing in the world, of such moment, had ever come before her. It was an evil unknown to her; in the old days her father was a man both abstemious and refined in his surroundings, and since her marriage, though she saw terrible accounts in the papers, she had lived so little in any town, and had seen so little that was evil, that she considered people made almost unnecessary fuss about teetotalism; she could not imagine such a fearful thing as drinking touching her order, though she knew it obtained among some poor miserable creatures, of whom she seldom thought without a shudder of sorrow, mingled with disgust. To think of Margaret, with all her great love of purity and peace, exposed to so horrible a thing, was something absolutely terrible to her; so perfectly appalling that she started up, feeling as though every moment was a cruel wrong to the girl she had learned to love so dearly. She went to her brother's room; he was sitting up, and she sat down beside him in a flutter of spirits that made her incoherent. "You have had a visitor," he began, with a laugh in which there was not much mirth. "Only Mrs. Wymans," she answered, with indifference. "If she could hear you! She is a person of great consequence in her own estimation." "I wonder why she called," his sister said, absently, doubtful as to her capability of putting the question without causing any excitement. "I'll tell you," he answered; "there is a great deal of curiosity about Drayton just now; before this attack of mine I was driven wild by all manner of questions about him. He is a great fool to make a mystery of his address; there is no reason he should do so; he answers no letters, he leaves every one to conjecture things, and in this beautiful world if a thing is not fully understood, the worst interpretation and not the best is the accepted one." "Then you think there is no reason for his shutting himself up?" "There can be no reason. Margaret is not likely to give him cause for jealousy, and the man is in the possession of all his senses." "Always, and at all times?" and Mrs. Dorriman leaned forward, breathing quickly and watching his face very anxiously. "Anne," said Mr. Sandford, and this name from him was an especial sign of kindness towards her, "has any one told you anything? Depend upon it it is only gossip."