Agatha was puzzled. She felt as if there were a dozen ways to turn and only one way that would lead her aright; and she could not find the clue to that one right way. At last she attacked the doctor boldly. "Tell me, Doctor Thayer," she said earnestly, "just what it is that causes Mrs. Stoddard to feel hurt and outraged. Is it simply because I have inherited the money and the house? She can not possibly know anything about me personally." The old doctor thrust his under jaw out more belligerently than ever, while turning his answer over in his mind. He took two lengths of the room before stopping again by Agatha's side and looking down on her. "She says it isn't the money, but that it's the slight Hercules put upon her for leaving the place, our old home, out of the family. That's one thing; but that isn't the worst. Susan's orthodox, you know, very orthodox; and she has a prejudice against your profession--serving Satan, she calls it. She thinks that's what actresses and opera singers do, though how she knows anything about it, I don't see." The grim smile shone in the doctor's eyes even while he looked, half anxiously, to see how Agatha was taking his explanation of Mrs. Stoddard's attitude. Agatha meditated a moment. "If it's merely a prejudice in the abstract against my being an opera singer, I think she will overcome that. Besides, Mr. Hambleton is neither an actor nor an opera singer; he isn't 'serving Satan.'" "Well--" the doctor hesitated, and then went on hastily with a great show of irritation, "Susan's a little set in her views. She disapproves of the way you came here; says you shouldn't have been out in a boat with two men, and that it's a judgment for sin, your being drowned, or next door to it. I'm only saying this, my dear Miss Agatha, to explain to you why Susan--" But Agatha was enlightened at last, and roused sufficiently to cause two red spots, brighter than they had ever been in health, to burn on her cheeks. She sat up very straight, facing Doctor Thayer's worried gaze, and interrupted him in tones ringing with anger. "Do you mean to tell me, Doctor Thayer, that your sister, the sister of my mother's lifelong friend, sits in her house and imagines scandalous stories about me, when she knows nothing at all about the facts or about me? That she thinks I was out in a boat alone with two men? That she is mean enough to condemn me without knowing the first thing about this awful accident? Oh, I have no words!" And Agatha covered her burning face with her hands, unable, by mere speech, to express her outraged feelings. Doctor Thayer edged uneasily about Agatha's couch, with a manner resembling that of a whipped dog. "Why, my dear Miss Agatha, Susan will come round in time. She's not so bad, really. She'll come round in time, only just now we haven't any time to spare. Don't feel so badly; Susan is too set in her views--" "'Set!'" cried Agatha. "She's a horrid, un-Christian woman!"