Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/217

 for she shivered slightly as she turned toward the young man and then glanced away again.

"We talked a good deal," continued Herforth, animatedly, "and I tried to brace him up as well as I could. Prophesied that he'd come back in six months perfectly well—and all that sort of thing. It had no effect on him, but he was awfully cool and plucky about his condition. He told me that his father and mother had both died of consumption, and that the doctors had given him no hope. He said that was why he had never married. He would not make the woman he loved wretched and hand down a legacy of physical ill to his children. And then he said something that will interest you."

Herforth had been speaking rather lightly, but if she had noticed it Miss Bancroft would have known that beneath the careless tone lay a warm sympathy for his friend. She did not notice it. She was not thinking: of Herforth just then. His few words had brought before her very vividly the farewell scene he was describing. She saw the two men together, and while the face of one was