I was glad that Esther seemed content to leave him in her charge. Dr. Rivers had come before we were ready to start, having fortunately been at home when Johnny arrived. He was a much more efficient doctor than poor old Dr. Devine, and it was fortunate that when he left the army he had decided to settle down in our neighbourhood. He came into the parlour to us after he had seen his patient. "Well, Dr. Rivers, what do you think of him?" Esther said, jumping up as soon as the door opened. "Oh, Miss Brandon, how do you do?" he said. "I see you have not lost interest in Mr. De Lacy." He looked at her with his keen, man-of-the-world eyes. "We are to be married, Dr. Rivers," said Esther, with a pathetic little air of dignity. The doctor's face changed, and became full of sympathy. "Oh, indeed!" he said; "no wonder you are anxious. There is nothing really the matter except that his vitality has been greatly reduced. What have they been doing to him since I put him out of my hands at Brandon, well on the way to recovery?" Esther told him briefly of the young man's detention at Castle Angry, and of our rescue of him. He nodded at intervals during the telling. "Ah! Miss Brandon," he said when she had finished, "one comes on strange happenings in one's profession, but this is like a tale out of a book, and no sober nineteenth-century business at all. Can you explain Sir Rupert's rancour against his grandson?" "There is enmity of long standing between Sir Rupert and our family. He probably thought that if he could keep his grandson long enough from his friends the matter of our engagement would fall through." "He would have slipped through his fingers very soon," said the physician grimly. "The man must be mad. If the lad had died of neglect and semi-starvation it would have been manslaughter at least. As it is," he said hastily, noticing that my sister had turned pale, "I believe you have saved him, Miss Brandon, though there is a lot of building-up required. Still, he is young, and happiness is a wonderful cure. You are leaving him in Mrs. O'Flaherty's care?" "Till he is a little stronger. She is his foster-mother, and will watch over him with the utmost tenderness." "And afterwards?" "We will be married as soon as possible, and I shall take him abroad." I wondered for the hundredth time at the power and resolution that had come into Esther with her love. Here she was arranging the future for herself and her lover as I should never have dared to do. "Ah! that will be good," said Dr. Rivers. "Get him away from places that are painful by association, as soon as possible. Above all, keep him from any conflict with his grandfather." "I don't think he will come into our lives again," said Esther, her face darkening. "If he should, we must protect ourselves at any cost. But at present you understand, Dr. Rivers, we are anxious to avoid publicity and scandal."