“How beautiful! And the very picture of health! What a strange message! I do not understand it, but I will not arouse her! I will wait till she wakes!” and he was about to sink into a chair by the table when the floor creaked at his movement, and she opened her eyes. For a moment they gazed speechlessly at each other, the man wondering, the young girl slightly dazed, believing her eyes must have played some trick on her brain. Here before her stood certainly the very handsomest man she had ever seen--tall, elegant, fascinating--and she was certainly expecting something like this to happen--or, at least, hoping it. But her great dreamy, dark eyes suddenly dilated from wonder to surprise and horror, her cheeks blanched, her lips parted with a gasping cry: “What is this? Have I lost my senses? Is it you, Doctor Ludington? How dare you?” She sat up in bed, huddling the covers about her with one hand, the other pointed at him in dismay. Doctor Ludington stood still, with his hand on the back of the chair, and answered gravely: “Are you not ill, Miss Somerville? Then why did you send for me?” “I send for you, sir? Never, never! I am not ill! If I were, I would die before I sent for you, the son of gran’ther’s enemy! Go, go, at once!” cried Eva, with bitter scorn. But he stood still, replying gravely: “Hear me, Miss Somerville, before you banish me in scorn! We have fallen into the snare of some practical joker, who sent for me to come here, saying that you were ill, dying--ah,” and his eyes fell on the table bespread with dainty viands, and he smiled in the face of her scorn. “I understand now,” he added. “You spread your table for a phantom lover, and some jester sent me to personate him. Ah, Miss Somerville--Eva--what a happy chance! Am I pardoned for coming, believing you were ill and needed me? Will you permit me to sup with you, indeed, since I am really quite famished, having been far into the country without food since breakfast, on my rounds to the sick?” Still half dazed, Eva motioned him to eat, and with a grateful smile he drew up his chair to the feast, saying gently: “But not one morsel without you, Miss Somerville. Permit me,” and he passed her the cake with a profound bow. A strange spell seized on her, intoxicating her senses with subtle pleasure, so that she mutely obeyed his gentle command, and, accepting the cake, began to eat, feeling almost as famished as he had declared himself to be. “Thank you; I am going in a moment, but we have broken cake, if not bread, together, and we may be friends hereafter, may we not?” pleaded Doctor Ludington earnestly, bending his blue eyes tenderly upon her troubled face. What she might have answered, whether with friendship or scorn, we may never know. An unheard footstep had come along the hall, and Terry Groves listening a moment to the murmur of voices in the room, suddenly stalked in with blazing eyes and a face purple with fury.