The possibility of evil tongues making capital of their enforced position had certainly never entered into the thought of this smiling girl.

Yet that such a possibility might exist in Coombe as well as in other places he did not doubt.

And she was in his charge.

The thought of her clear eyes looking upon the thing which she did not know enough to dread made him feel positively sick! When he spoke to her again there was a subtle change in his manner.

He had become at once her senior, the physician, and man of the world.
"Miss Esther," he said, leaving his futile tampering with the machine, "I can see no way out of this but one.