Charles, who was present, immediately took the blame upon himself, but Evelyn was not to be appeased. By this time the whole neighborhood was ringing with the news of the arrival of a foreign wife at Vandon, and Evelyn felt that Dare's presence in her blue bedroom, with crockery and crewel-work curtains to match, compromised that apartment and herself, and that he must incontinently depart out of it. It was in vain that Ralph and even Charles expostulated. She remained unmoved. It was not, she said, as if she had been unwilling to receive him, in the first instance, as a possible Roman Catholic, though many might have blamed her for that, and perhaps she _had_ been to blame; but she had never, no, never, had any one to stay that anybody could say anything about. (This was a solemn fact which it was impossible to deny.) Ralph might remember her own cousin, Willie Best, and she had always liked Willie, had never been asked again after that time--Ralph chuckled--that time he knew of. She was very sorry, and she quite understood all Charles meant, and she quite saw the force of what he said; but she could not allow people to stay in the house who had foreign wives that had been kept secret. What was poor Willie, who had only--Ralph need not laugh; there was nothing to laugh at--what was Willie to this? She must be consistent. She could see Charles was very angry with her, but she could not encourage what was wrong, even if he was angry. In short, Dare must go. But, when it came to the point, it was found that Dare could not go. Nothing short of force would have turned the unwelcome guest out of the bed in the blue bedroom, from which he made no attempt to rise, and on which he lay worn-out and feverish, in a stupor of sheer mental and physical exhaustion. Charles and Ralph went and looked at him rather ruefully, with masculine helplessness, and the end of it was that Evelyn, in nowise softened, for she was a good woman, had to give way, and a doctor was sent for. "Send for the man in D----. Don't have the Slumberleigh man," said Charles; "it will only make more talk;" and the doctor from D---- was accordingly sent for. He did not arrive till the afternoon, and after he had seen Dare, and given him a sleeping draught, and had talked reassuringly of a mental shock and a feverish temperament he apologized for his delay in coming. He had been kept, he said, drawing on his gloves as he spoke, by a very serious case in the police-station at D----. A man had been arrested on suspicion the previous night, and he seemed to have sustained some fatal internal injury. He ought to have been taken to the infirmary at once; but it had been thought he was only shamming when first arrested, and once in the police-station he could not be moved, and--the doctor took up his hat--he would probably hardly outlive the day.