Supposing Patricia Adair did marry Lawrence Blake. What of it? But she tore the thought out of her mind. She would not suppose it. It came back in another form—a series of mental pictures cruelly contrasting Shepherd’s Bush and the dispensary with Mourne Lodge. For Paddy knew well enough that under no circumstances would she accept a home from Jack and her sister—under no circumstances give up her work and her independence, to be dependent on any one’s bounty. No, she would go back to her work alone, and they would live at The Ghan House without her. But how it hurt to think of it! The dingy suburb, the grey street, her aunt’s everlasting platitudes, for of course she would live again at the doctor’s house—just grey, lifeless monotony, instead of the lake and the mountains. And how he had understood! “_Mavourneen, mavourneen, bears have understanding when they love as I love you_.” She tried to crush out the recollection, conscious that her soul was sounding indefinable warnings as a far-off accompaniment. Oh, of course, he was fascinating—had she not always known it—known all her life that there were two Lawrence Blakes, and one as alluring as the other was repellant. Resolutely, she turned her thoughts to the unpleasing one; she who had somehow had special opportunities of clear sight. She remembered the old rumours of excess and extravagance. Had not her own father shaken his head gravely long ago, and said things he imagined she would not understand. Perhaps she did not then—but now! Unprincipled, unscrupulous, fast, wild, a gambler. “Wild oats,” she told herself—“Wild oats.” It was not that that built the barrier—this barrier that was as a grim spectre, waving ghostly arms between them. Could anything, even mercifully, write “wild oats” over his heartlessness? When she thought of those locked hands in the boat on the loch, her blood still boiled—of how very nearly Eileen’s delicate constitution had broken down altogether under her silent fretting—of how her mother had grieved and fretted likewise. She thought of his moods at home. How often—oh, how often—she had longed to strike him for the tone in which he sometimes spoke to his mother and sisters. For his selfishness, his coldness, his sneers. How often she had gone home pitying the girls such a brother, hating him with all her young enthusiasm. And then, further complicating everything, flashed again the recollection, even in those days, of his charm, if he happened to be in the right mood. Why, even Doreen and Kathleen were influenced by it; every one was. If Lawrence were in his charming mood, the whole house was sunny and gay, and Paddy had quickly enough forgotten old feuds, and immensely enjoyed a good-natured, wordy battle with him. When she hated him most, he had still had a lurking attraction for her, or she would not have bothered to cross swords. Only a lurking attraction is not love. The old spectre still stood firm, waving ghostly arms between them.