He was a fat, comfortable-looking man, his hands in particular were very fat, and when he warred to show special sympathy he was fond of rubbing them. "Dear, dear!" he repeated. "A blight! That's more a phrase to apply to the potato than to a blooming young girl." "All the same, doctor, it's true. Matty has been blighted. She had set her young affections where they were craved and sought, and, so to speak, begged for. She gave them, _not willingly_, doctor, but after all the language that melting eyes, and more melting words, could employ. _The_ word wasn't spoken, but all else was done. She gave her heart, doctor, not unasked, and now it's sent back to her, and she's blighted, that's the only word for it." "I should think so," said the doctor, who was far too professional to smile. "A heart returned like that is always a little difficult to dispose of. Might I ask who--but perhaps you'd rather not tell me?" "No, Doctor Morris, I'd rather tell you; I've sent for you to tell you, and it isn't so much that I blame him, poor young man, for it was all managed between his mother and Beatrice, all, from the very first, and it's my firm belief that he had neither part nor parcel in it. I did what I could, as in duty bound, to give him his chances, but those designers were too many for me." "You don't mean," said the doctor--he really did not concern himself much about Northbury gossip, and no rumors of Matty's flirtations had reached him--"You don't mean Captain Bertram? Why, I have just heard he is engaged to Beatrice. You can't mean Captain Bertram? Impossible." "I do mean Captain Bertram, doctor. No more and no less. And I'll thank you not again to mention the name of that siren, Beatrice, in my presence. Now if you'll come upstairs, I'll show you the poor blighted child." Mrs. Bell had insisted on Matty's staying in bed. After the first awful shock of Mrs. Butler's news had subsided, she had made up her mind that the only _rôle_ left to her daughter was that of the dying martyr. All the town should know that Beatrice had robbed her friend, and that this young and innocent friend was now at death's door. Alice and Sophy were both in the room with their sister, and they were expatiating very loudly on what they considered "ma's cruelty." "You know perfectly, Matty, that he never cared for you," remarked the candid Sophy. "It was all ma's folly from first to last." "First to last," echoed Alice. "And you're not really ill," pursued Sophy. "You slept very sound all last night." "And snored," continued Alice. "Only ma will make a fuss, one way or other," proceeded Sophy. "Now you're to be the forsaken one, and what ma would like would be for your funeral bell to toll the day Bee has her wedding chimes." "And we all love Bee," said Alice. "And we'd like to go to her wedding," said Sophy. "Wouldn't you, Matty? Say, now, if you were going to have a new white muslin for it?"