The Queen of Sheba, and My Cousin the Colonel

"Now, Mr. Lynde, I am at your service."

Lynde gave a start, as if the doctor had suddenly dropped down at his side from out of the sky.

Dr. Pendegrast pushed back his chair and led the way across the quadrangle, in which a number of persons were taking coffee at small tables set here and there under oleander-trees in green-painted tubs. The smoking-room was unoccupied. Lynde stood a moment undetermined in the centre of the apartment, and then he laid his hand on the doctor's shoulder.

"You don't remember me?"

"Ah, then I HAVE seen you before!" exclaimed Dr. Pendegrast, transfixed in the act of drawing a cigar from his case. "Your name and your face puzzled me, but I could not place you, so I didn't mention it. You must pardon an old man's bad memory. I am confused. When and where have I had the pleasure of seeing you?"

"It was scarcely a pleasure," said Lynde, with bitterness.

"Indeed! I cannot imagine that; it is a pleasure now," returned the doctor courteously. "It was three years ago, at your asylum. As you will recollect, I was brought there by mistake the day the patients"—

"Bless me!" exclaimed the doctor, dropping the ignited match. "How could I forget you! I took such a great liking to you, too. I have thought of that awkward affair a thousand times. But, really, coming across you in this unexpected manner"—

"I suppose I have changed somewhat," Lynde broke in. "Dr. Pendegrast, I am in a very strange position here. It is imperative you should be perfectly frank with me. You will have to overlook my abruptness. Mr. Denham may return any instant, and what I have to say cannot be said in his presence. I know that Miss Denham has been under your charge as a patient. I want to know more than that bare circumstance."

The doctor recoiled a step. "Of course," he said, recovering himself, "you must have recognized her."

"I met your friends six or seven weeks ago at Geneva," continued Lynde. "I recognized Miss Denham at once; but later I came to doubt and finally to disbelieve that I had ever seen her elsewhere. I refused to accept the testimony of my eyes and ears because—because so much of my happiness depended on my rejecting it."

"Does Mrs. Denham know that you are in possession of the fact you mention? Denham of course doesn't."

"No; it is my meeting with you that he turned my discarded doubt into a certainty."

"Then, I beg of you," said Dr. Pendegrast throwing a glance across the quadrangle, "not to breathe a syllable of this; do not even think of it. It has been kept from every one—from even the most intimate friends of the family; Ruth herself is not aware of her temporary derangement."

"Miss Denham does not know it?"

"She has not the remotest suspicion of the misfortune which befell her three years ago."

"Miss Denham does not know it?" repeated Lynde in a dazed way.

"That—that seems impossible! Pardon me. How did it happen, Dr.

Pendegrast?"

"I assume that you are not asking me through idle curiosity," said the doctor, looking at him attentively.

"I have vital reasons for my question, Doctor."

"I do not see why I should not tell you, since you know so much. The family were in Florida that spring. Ruth had not been well for several months; they had gone South on her account. It was partly a pulmonary difficulty. On their return North, Ruth was prostrated by a typhoid fever. She recovered from that but with her mind strangely disordered. The mental malady increased with her convalescence. Denham and I were old friends; he had faith in my skill, and she was placed in my care. She was brought to the asylum because I could not attend to her anywhere else. I considered her case serious at first, even hopeless. The human body is still a mystery, after science has said its last word. The human mind is a deeper mystery. While I doubted of her recovery, she recovered. At the first intimation of returning health, she was taken home; when her wandering thought came back to her she was in her own room. She remembered that she had been very ill, a long time ill; she had a faint impression that I had attended her meanwhile; but she remembered nothing more. The knowledge of her affliction was kept a secret from her—unwisely, I think. They put it off and put it off, until it became very awkward to tell her."

Lynde started as he recalled his conversation with Miss Denham on the

rocks overhanging the Mer de Glace. With unwitting cruelty he had told

Ruth her own pathetic story, and she had unconsciously pitied herself!

A lump came into his throat as he remembered it.

"That was a mistake," said Lynde, with an effort, "not to tell her."

"An absurd mistake. It has given my friends no end of trouble and embarrassment."

"How long was she afflicted this way?"

"Something less than two months."

"It was the result of the fever?"

"That chiefly."

"It was not—hereditary?" Lynde lingered on the word.

"No."

"Then it is not likely to occur again?"

"I cannot think of anything more unlikely," returned the doctor, "unless the same conditions conspire, which is scarcely supposable, as I could easily prove to you. You can understand, Mr. Lynde, that this has been a sore trial to Denham and his wife; they have had no children, and their hearts are bound up in Ruth. The dread of a recurrence of the trouble has haunted them night and day in spite of all the arguments I could advance to reassure them. They have got what our French friends call a fixed idea, which is generally an idea that requires a great deal of fixing. The girl ought to marry—every woman ought to marry, it is her one mission; but between their affections and their apprehensions, my friends have allowed Ruth no opportunity to form attachments."

"I'm glad of that," said Lynde quietly.

"Are you!" snapped the doctor. "I am not. I would like to see her married some day. Meanwhile I would like to see a dozen lovers about her. It is as natural for a young girl to coquet as it is for a canary to peck at its seed or trim its bill on a bit of fishbone. It is had for the girl and the canary when they are prevented."

"There is something human in this crisp old doctor," said Lynde to himself, and then aloud: "So Mr. Denham has no matrimonial plans for her?"

"None whatever. Since Ruth's recovery the family have been constantly on the wing, either at home or abroad. Most of Ruth's life has been passed over here. I trust to your discretion. You will perceive the necessity of keeping all this to yourself."

"I do, and I now see that your travelling with the Denhams is a circumstance in no way connected with the state of Miss Denham's health."

"Not in the most distant manner, Mr. Lynde. I am with them because they are my old friends. I was worn out with professional work, and I ran across the sea to recuperate. It is fortunate I did, since Ruth chances to need me."

Lynde pondered a moment, and then asked abruptly: "Does Mrs. Denham know of my former meeting with her niece?"

"I never breathed a word to Mrs. Denham on the subject of Ruth's escapade," replied the doctor. "It would have pained her without mending matters. Besides, I was not proud of that transaction."

Mrs. Denham's suppression of the doctor's name, then, in speaking of him to Lynde, had been purely accidental.

"Miss Ruth's strange hallucination, in her illness, as to personality, her fancy about the Queen of Sheba—what was that traceable to?" asked Lynde, after a pause.

"Heaven only knows. She was reading the Old Testament very much in those days. I have sometimes accepted that as an explanation. It often happens that a delusion takes its cue from something read, or thought, or experienced in a rational state. In the case of the man Blaisdell, for example—you remember him, with his marble ship? He was formerly an enterprising ship-builder; during the Southern war he filled a contract with government for a couple of ironclads, and made his fortune. The depression in shipping afterwards ruined him—and he fell to constructing marble vessels! He is dead, by the way. I wonder if his reason has been given back to him—in that other world."

Lynde did not speak immediately, and the doctor relighted his cigar, which had gone out.

"Dr. Pendegrast, you have lifted a crushing weight from me. I cannot explain it to you now and here; but you shall know some day."

Dr. Pendegrast smiled. "I didn't recollect you at first, Mr. Lynde; my memory for names and faces is shockingly derelict, but I have retained most of my other faculties in tolerably good order. I have been unreserved with you because I more than suspect"—