Dr. Breens Practice | Page 8

she found her mother waiting to go down to tea.
"Where is Mrs. Maynard?" asked Mrs. Breen.
"Out on the croquet-ground," answered the daughter.
"I should think it would be damp," suggested Mrs. Green.
"She will come in when the tea-bell rings. She wouldn't come in now, if I told her."
"Well," said the elder lady, "for a person who lets her doctor pay her board, I think 'she's very independent."
"I wish you would n't speak of that, mother," said the girl.
"I can't help it, Grace. It's ridiculous,--that's what it is; it's ridiculous."
"I don't see anything ridiculous in it. A physician need not charge anything unless he chooses, or she; and if I choose to make Louise my guest here it's quite the same as if she were my guest at home."
"I don't like you to have such a guest," said Mrs. Green. "I don't see what claim she has upon your hospitality."
"She has a double claim upon it," Grace answered, with a flush. "She is in sickness and in trouble. I don't see how she could have a better claim. Even if she were quite well I should consider the way she had been treated by her husband sufficient, and I should want to do everything I could for her."
"I should want her to behave herself," said Mrs. Breen dryly.
"How behave herself? What do you mean?" demanded Grace, with guilty heat.
"You know what I mean, Grace. A woman in her position ought to be more circumspect than any other woman, if she wants people to believe that her husband treated her badly."
"We ought n't to blame her for trying to forget her troubles. It's essential to her recovery for her to be as cheerful as she can be. I know that she's impulsive, and she's free in her manners with strangers; but I suppose that's her Westernism. She's almost distracted. She was crying half the night, with her troubles, and kept Bella and me both awake."
"Is Bella with her now?"
"No," Grace admitted. "Jane's getting her ready to go down with us. Louise is talking with a gentleman who came over on the steamer with her; he's camping on the beach near here. I didn't wait to hear particulars."
When the nurse brought the little girl to their door, Mrs. Green took one hand and Grace the other, and they led her down to tea. Mrs. Maynard was already at table, and told them all about meeting Mr. Libby abroad.
Until the present time she and Grace had not seen each other since they were at school together in Southington, where the girl used to hear so much to the disadvantage of her native section that she would hardly have owned to it if her accent had not found her out. It would have been pleasanter to befriend another person, but the little Westerner suffered a veritable persecution, and that was enough to make Grace her friend. Shortly after she returned home from school she married, in that casual and tentative fashion in which so many marriages seem made. Grace had heard of her as travelling in Europe with her husband, from whom she was now separated. She reported that he had known Mr. Libby in his bachelor days, and that Mr. Libby had travelled with them. Mr. Maynard appeared to have left to Mr. Libby the arrangement of his wife's pleasures, the supervision of her shopping, and the direction of their common journeys and sojourns; and it seemed to have been indifferent to him whether his friend was smoking and telling stories with him, or going with his wife to the opera, or upon such excursions as he had no taste for. She gave the details of the triangular intimacy with a frank unconsciousness; and after nine o'clock she returned from a moonlight walk on the beach with Mr. Libby.
Grace sat waiting for her at the little one's bedside, for Bella had been afraid to go to sleep alone.
"How good you are!" cried Louise, in a grateful under-tone, as she came in. She kissed Grace, and choked down a cough with her hand over her mouth.
"Louise," said Grace sternly, "this is shameful! You forget that you are married, and ill, too."
"Oh, I'm ever so much better, to-night. The air's just as dry! And you needn't mind Mr. Libby. He's such an old friend! Besides, I'm sure to gain the case."
"No matter. Even as a divorced woman, you oughtn't to go on in this way."
"Well, I would n't, with every one. But it's quite different with Mr. Libby. And, besides, I have to keep my mind from preying on itself somehow."

II.
Mrs. Maynard sat in the sun on the seaward-looking piazza of the hotel, and coughed in the warm air. She told the ladies, as they came out from breakfast, that she was ever so much better generally,