"I can bear that. I have borne worse things. Oh, do not look so astonished, Dr. Ellis. I have had a queer up-and-down, topsy-turvy sort of life. Some day I may tell it to you, but we don't know each other well enough for that yet. If I find that you deserve my confidence---" She broke off the sentence abruptly. "Never mind that now. I have work to do. Yes! I shall take your advice about calling on Mr. Busham. This very day I shall call and ask him about the will. Could you meet me here at three o'clock, doctor?" Ellis felt his breath taken away by the boldness of the demand. "If you wish me to come." "Of course I wish it or I would not ask. Remember, doctor, you are my friend. No, don't repeat that folly. We are comrades at present, nothing more. You do not understand me now. You will when I explain." "Will you ever explain?" "Yes! No! I can't say. So much depends upon what kind of a man I find you to be. Now, go, please, as I must dress for my visit. Mind, I shall expect you at three o'clock, to tell you the result of my interview." "At three o'clock," repeated Ellis, earnestly, and so they parted. When the doctor found himself in the broad, cheerful sunshine of the Jubilee Road he was not quite certain if he was asleep or awake. To him Mrs. Moxton was more of an enigma than the murder itself. He could not understand her attitude, nor could he guess what motive she had in acting thus strangely. She was apparently pleased that he loved her; she was angry at his abrupt declaration; he could not gain her confidence; yet she requested him to meet her at three o'clock to ask his advice about her visit. What was he to understand from such a medley of contradictions? He sought in his own mind for every possible explanation, but could find none, so concluding that it was the more sensible course to possess his soul in patience until this sphinx explained her own riddle, he returned home. Here, to his surprise, he found a friend of the morbid lady's come to consult him about her heart, and in the joy of such promise of an increasing practice he forgot Mrs. Moxton and her eccentricities. In a similar situation a woman would not have forgotten, but Byron's lines give the reason for that: "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'Tis woman's whole existence."