“Admit it?” he echoed fervently. “Indeed I _do_! I’d have acted just the same way myself. I think you did the only thing any self-respecting woman could have done under the circumstances. Of course, it was tough on the others. But that was their lookout, not yours.” He sank back into his black brooding; all oblivious of the glare of angry bewilderment wherewith the old lady favored him and of Doris’s wondering stare. Next day Dr. Lawton declared Clive vastly improved. The following morning he pronounced him to be firm-set on the road to quick recovery. On the third day he ventured to let the convalescent tell his whole story, and Clive was none the worse for the ordeal of its telling. The doctor, going downstairs again, found awaiting him two members of the same trio who had listened to his earlier recital. Doris had driven in to Aura for the mail and had not yet returned. Thus only her aunt and Thaxton greeted the doctor on his descent from the sick room. Thanks to a scared course of diet, Miss Gregg had subdued her gastric insurrection and therefore had lost her savage yearning to insult all doctors in general and Dr. Lawton in particular. She hung upon his words to-day with flattering attention, not once interrupting or taking advantage of a single opening for tart repartee. The doctor’s spirits burgeoned under such civility. He told his story well and with due dramatic emphasis, seldom repeating himself more than thrice at most in recounting any of its details. Stripped of these repetitions and of a few moral and philosophical sidelights of his own, the doctor’s narrative may be summed up thus: * * * * * Having safely disposed of his twin in the California sanitarium, Osmun Creede returned to Aura. There he resolved to begin life afresh. He had several good reasons for doing this. No one knew better than he that he had made himself the most unpopular man in the neighborhood, and, as with most unpopular men, his greatest secret yearning was for popularity. In the guise of his popular brother this seemed not only possible but easy of accomplishment. Too, he was doggedly and hopelessly in love with Doris Lane. He knew she did not care for him. He knew she could never care for him. She had told him so both times he had proposed to her. But he had a strong belief that his brother Clive had been on the point of winning her when the war had separated them. He was certain that, in the guise of Clive, he could continue the wooing and bring it to a victorious end. But his foremost reason for the masquerade was that he had lost in speculation all his own share of the $500,000 left by their father to the twins and that he had managed secretly to misappropriate no less than $50,000 of his brother’s share. It was this shortage which decided him to go back to Aura in the dual rôle of both brethren, instead of following his first impulse and going as Clive alone.