a distant nod.
"I've brought you the local rag," said Scott, planting himself firmly on a hard upright chair. "It has a full report. I walked over to Ambleside for it."
Gardiner thanked him amiably, glanced over the sheet, and passed it to Denis, who read solidly through from end to end; this to keep out of the conversation. "Here's a man I don't know: safe to be a bounder: confound his impudence!"--such was his attitude to the casual stranger. He did not like the middle classes.
"We're up here because he didn't fancy the parlor," said Gardiner, with a lazy nod towards his friend. "Says the place makes him sick. You'd expect a flying man to have cranks, wouldn't you? He has enough to stock an engine. What do you recommend for nerves, doctor?"
"M'm! you don't look up to much yourself. You're the color of brown holland."
"Me? I'm as limp as a rag; never felt so pale in my life. All these agitations are so trying," said Gardiner, filling his pipe and pushing the cigarettes across the table. "Help yourself. I can recommend them; that fellow never buys a cheap smoke. How's Mrs. Trent?"
"As well as can be expected."
"Poor little woman," said Gardiner. "I say, doctor, I am beastly sorry about this. Sorrier than I've been about most things in my life."
The sincere feeling behind his words drew out Scott's impatient reply. "Woman! She's a child: not a day over twenty. A girl's too young at that age to marry and face this sort of thing. I'd make it illegal."
"My dear man, don't shout at me! I don't know how old she is: couldn't tell her from Eve, if I met her. I never saw her without that motor veil thing hanging over her face. She's lost her child, hasn't she?"
"She has."
"Do you know where she comes from, or anything about her people?"
"What the maid told me. She has no people. Lived till her marriage with an uncle and aunt who owed her a grudge about some money that was left to her over the uncle's head. They wouldn't let her speak to a man, for fear she should marry and they lose the enjoyment of it. Trent made her elope with him. Naturally she looked on him as a sort of St. George."
"A good thing he died before she found him out, then."
"He was a rascal, was he?"
"Well, he wasn't precisely a St. George."
"H'm!" said Scott. It was an expression he used often, and with varying meaning. Gardiner smoked in silence. Denis, who had read to the end of the inquest, propped his tall, immaculate person against a chimney-stack and watched them both. When he did not snap, the little doctor expressed himself like an educated man, and his voice was pure in quality. These things were in his favor.
"Has she still got that idea in her head about me?" asked Gardiner.
"How do I know, man? Do you suppose I talk to my patients about things of that kind? She hasn't mentioned you 

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