He was almost fawning now. Andrew did not know which aspect of the man he found more distasteful--the sudden, lunatic rage of a minute ago or this present and horrible obsequiousness. "Pray think no more of it," said Andrew, haughtily, trying to copy Dr. Gentian's tone, "Miss Gentian is about to sing again--shall we hear her?" He led the way back into the room. But he was relieved when, after Mr. Cave had taken his bearish departure, Dr. Gentian explained the reason for his singular behaviour. "You have my thanks for treating Mr. Cave so courteously," he said gravely. "A strange, bitter creature, Cave--but loyal and devoted, so we must put up with his strangeness." He lowered his voice, "He comes of good enough stock--but you see it's by the left hand--and that frets him, whenever he's in company." "If he had his rights he'd be rich. Rich," said Sparta Gentian suddenly in her thrilling voice. "You were going to play us something of Handel's, my dear," said her father, and the girl turned back to the forte-piano with an impatient jerk of her head. Under cover of the music, Dr. Gentian went on in snatches. "I found him in London--what an exquisite passage, my pet--very bitter against the world. Well, I'd known his father. A hard man. I thought perhaps in a country where nobody knew the story--but I fear the wound is too old and deep. One cannot blame him too much. In his place, who would not be strange? Ah, bravo, daughter!" and he clapped his hands. Surely, thought Andrew, here was a gentleman of the most comprehensive benevolence and understanding, and as he looked at the beauty of Sparta Gentian's face, a little flushed now from the exertion of playing, he resolved that the morrow would find him more than courteous to unlucky Mr. Cave. 7. The morrow came--and other morrows. A month slipped down the curve of the year without Andrew's realizing how quickly it had vanished--the indigo was in its third cutting--then in its fourth. Soon it was time for hoarfrost to whiten the doorstep of the house on Wall Street and autumn to gild and redden the trees on the Boston road. Here it was hard to believe in snow feathering from a leaden caldron of sky and the cries of skaters on the black ice of Lispenard's Pond. The news from the North was scant and disturbing, but its message, to Andrew, very tiny and far away, a troubled voice hardly heard through heavy glass, the faint disturbance of cannon and drums on a ship anchored beyond the horizon.