"Hm-m; just about what I expected she'd say," commented the doctor's sister tranquilly, as she laid the letter down. "Oh, you women!" flung out the doctor, springing to his feet and turning wrathfully on his heel. The doctor was relieved, but not wholly eased in his mind some days later when he heard indirectly that Denby Mansion was closed, and that the Denbys were off again to some remote corner of the world. "Well, anyhow, the widow isn't with him now," he comforted himself aloud. "Building bridges for the Hottentots again?" smiled his sister. "Yes. Australia this time." "Hm-m; that's nice and far," mused the lady. "Oh, yes, it's far, all right," growled the doctor, somewhat belligerently. "Anyhow, it's too far for the widow, thank Heaven!" The doctor went himself "far" before the month was out. Already his plans were made for a six months' trip with a research party to his pet hunting-ground--the grotto land of northern Spain. Once more the calmness of silence and absence left Edith Thayer with only Helen Denby's occasional letters to remind her of Burke Denby and his matrimonial problem. CHAPTER XVIII A LITTLE BUNCH OF DIARIES It was three years before the doctor went up to Dalton again. It was on a sad errand this time. John Denby had died suddenly, and after an hour's hesitation, the doctor went up to the funeral. There were no garish lights and shrieking violins to greet him as he passed once more up the long, familiar walk. The warm September sun touched lovingly the old brass knocker, and peeped behind the stately colonial pillars of the long veranda. It gleamed for a moment on the bald heads of the somber-coated men filing slowly through the wide doorway, and it tried to turn to silver the sable crape hanging at the right of the door. Not until that evening, after the funeral, did the doctor have the opportunity for more than a formal word of greeting and sympathy with Burke Denby. He had been shocked in the afternoon at the changes in the young man's face; but he was more so when, at eight o'clock, he called at the house. He found Burke alone in the library--the library whose every book and chair and curio spoke with the voice of the man who was gone--the man who had loved them so well. Burke himself, to the doctor, looked suddenly old and worn, and infinitely weary of life. He did not at once speak of his father. But when he did speak of him, a little later, he seemed then to want to talk of nothing else. Things that his father had done and said, his little ways, his likes and dislikes, the hours of delight they had passed together, the trips they had taken, even the tiddledywinks and Mother Goose of childhood came in for their share. On and on until far into the night he talked, and the doctor listened, with a word now and then of sympathy or appreciation; but with a growing ache in his heart. "You have been, indeed, a wonderful father and son," he said at last unsteadily.