He looked at me keenly.
"Tell me what's up, my son," said he.
"You know Miss Elisabeth Churchill--" I hesitated.
He nodded.

"Yes," he rejoined; "and damn you, sir! if you give that girl a heartache, you'll have to settle with me!" "Some one will have to settle with me!" I returned hotly.
"Tell me, then." So, briefly, I did tell him what little I knew of the events of the last hour.

I told him of the shame and humiliation of it all.

He pondered for a minute and asked me at length if I believed Miss Elisabeth suspected anything of my errand of the night before.
"How could she ?" I answered.

"So far as I can recollect I never mentioned the name of the Baroness von Ritz." Then, all at once, I did recollect! I did remember that I had mentioned the name of the baroness that very morning to Elisabeth, when the baroness passed us in the East Room! I had not told the truth--I had gone with a lie on my lips that very day, and asked her to take vows with me in which no greater truth ought to be heard than the simple truth from me to her, in any hour of the day, in any time of our two lives! Doctor Ward was keen enough to see the sudden confusion on my face, but he made no comment beyond saying that he doubted not time would clear it all up; that he had known many such affairs.
"But mind you one thing," he added; "keep those two women apart." "Then why do you two doddering old idiots, you and John Calhoun, with life outworn and the blood dried in your veins, send me, since you doubt me so much, on an errand of this kind?
You see what it has done for me.