Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III ONCE more the curtain was rung down on the drama of which Bainbridge had taken part in but two small scenes. Another year and a half went by, bringing him to the age of thirty-three, before he was obliged to recur to it. Once more, too, the pressure of small happenings had almost crowded both incidents from his memory. He did not, of course, forget the coming to him either of the veiled woman or of Sir Malcolm Grant, but he forgot, partially, what they had told him. Many people were beginning to seek him with their confidences, financial, domestic, religious, and in the course of time one such event melted into another. He made no notes, as a doctor of the names and symptoms of his patients, and as a matter of fact was only too glad to let the details of perplexity and care pass into that mental limbo which was all but oblivion. When the same person came to him the second time he was generally able to take up the narrative where it had been dropped; but, as a rule, one man's troubles pushed another's from his mind, till a need arose for going back to them. Malcolm Grant became to him, therefore, but a dim Herculean Scotch-Canadian with whom he had once had a few minutes of intimate talk. At long intervals he saw his name in the papers, as being at one or another of the New York hotels, or as the head of a house taking part insome large enterprise in Canada, Cuba, or South America. Once or twice, in conversation with Canadians whom he chanced to meet, it occurred to him to ask if the baronet had married, but he repressed the inquiry as verging too closely on mere curiosity. He speculated now and then on what might have happened between Grant and the woman after the former had left his door; but as far as he was able to control his thoughts, he kept himself from...