Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/149

Rh a mere parenthesis and conversation in general scarce began with a capital. But on this occasion the Doctor was floated to a seat not, as usual, on the bosom of the immediately previous.

"Guess whom I've just overtaken on your doorstep. The young man you befriended four years ago—Mr. Vidal, Miss Armiger's flame!"

Mrs. Beever fell back in her surprise; it was rare for Mrs. Beever to fall back. "He has turned up again?" Her eyes had already asked more than her friend could tell. "For what in the world?"

"For the pleasure of seeing you. He has evidently retained a very grateful sense of what you did for him."

"I did nothing, my dear man—I had to let it alone."

"Tony's condition—of course I remember—again required you. But you gave him a shelter," said the Doctor, "that wretched day and that night, and he felt (it was evidently much to him) that, in his rupture with his young woman, you had the right instinct of the matter and were somehow on his side."

"I put him up for a few hours—I saved him, in