of imagination.  Perhaps in all this she takes
after her poor father, but in a more marked
degree—at least, I observe it more in her. For
he was peculiarly silent and reserved.  And
perhaps also her peculiarities have been fostered
by the seclusion in which she has been brought
up. It was with a view to make her a little
more like girls of her own age that our friend,
Mrs. Poyntz, induced me to come here. Lilian
was reconciled to this change; but she shrunk
from the thoughts of London, which I should
have preferred. Her poor father could not
endure London."

"Miss Ashleigh is fond of reading?"

"Yes, she is fond of reading, but more fond
of musing. She will sit by herself for hours
without book or work, and seem as abstracted
as if in a dream. She was so even in her earliest
childhood. Then she would tell me what she
had been conjuring up to herself. She would
say that she had seen—positively seen—
beautiful lands far away from earth; flowers and
trees not like ours. As she grew older this
visionary talk displeased me, and I scolded her,
and said that if others heard her, they would
think that she was not only silly but very
untruthful. So of late years she never ventures
to tell me what, in such dreamy moments,
she suffers herself to imagine; but the habit of
musing continues still. Do you not agree with
Mrs. Poyntz, that the best cure would be a
little cheerful society amongst other young
people?"

"Certainly," said I, honestly, though with a
jealous pang. "But here comes the medicine.
Will you take it up to her, and then sit with
her half an hour or so?  By that time I expect
she will be asleep.  I will wait here till you
return.  Oh, I can amuse myself with the
newspapers and books on your table. Stay! one
caution: be sure there are no flowers in Miss
Ashleigh's sleeping-room. I think I saw a
treacherous rose-tree in a stand by the window. If
so, banish it."

Left alone, I examined the room in which,
O thought of joy! I had surely now won the
claim to become a privileged guest. I touched
the books Lilian must have touched; in the
articles of furniture, as yet so hastily disposed
that the settled look of home was not about
them, I still knew that I was gazing on things
which her mind must associate with the history
of her young life. That lute-harp—must be
surely hers, and the scarf, with a girl's favourite
colours—pure white and pale blue,—and the
bird-cage, and the childish ivory work-case, with
implements too pretty for use, all spoke of her.

It was a blissful intoxicating reverie, which
Mrs. Ashleigh's entrance disturbed.

Lilian was sleeping calmly.  I had no
pretence to linger there any longer.

"I leave you, I trust, with your mind quite
at ease," said I. "You will allow me to call
to-morrow, in the afternoon?"

"Oh yes, gratefully.''

Mrs. Ashleigh held out her hand as I made
towards the door.

Is there a physician who has not felt at times
how that ceremonious fee throws him back from
he garden land of humanity into the marketplace
of money—seems to put him out of the
pale of equal friendship, and say "True, you
have given health and life. Adieu! there, you
are paid for it."  With a poor person there
would have been no dilemma, but Mrs. Ashleigh
was affluent: to depart from custom here was
almost impertinence.  But had the penalty of
my refusal been the doom of never again
beholding Lilian, I could not have taken her
mother's gold.  So I did not appear to notice
the hand held out to me, and passed by with
a quickened step.

"But, Dr. Fenwick, stop!"

"No, ma'am, no!  Miss Ashleigh would have
recovered as soon without me. Whenever my
aid is really wanted, then——but Heaven grant
that time may never come. We will talk again
about her to-morrow."

I was gone. Now in the garden ground,
odorous with blossoms; now in the lane,
enclosed by the narrow walls; now in the deserted
streets, over which the moon shone full as in
that winter night when I hurried from the
chamber of death.  But the streets were not
ghastly now, and the moon was no longer
Hecate, that dreary goddess of awe and spectres,
but the sweet, simple Lady of the Stars, on
wliose gentle face lovers have gazed ever since
(if that guess of astronomers be true) she was
parted from earth to rule the tides of its deeps
from afar, even as love from love divided rules
the heart that yearns towards it with mysterious
law!

CHAPTER XI.

WITH what increased benignity I listened to
the patients who visited me the next morning.
The whole human race seemed to me worthier of
love, and I longed to diffuse amongst all some
rays of the glorious hope that had dawned upon
my heart. My first call, when I went forth, was
on the poor young woman from whom I had
been returning the day before, when an impulse,
which seemed like a fate, had lured me into the
grounds where I had firsf seen Lilian. I felt
grateful to this poor patient; without her,
Lilian herself might be yet unknown to me.

The girl's brother, a young man employed in
the police, and whose pay supported a widowed
mother and the suffering sister, received me at
the threshold of the cottage.

"Oh, sir! she is so much better to-day; almost
free from pain. Will she live, now? can
she live?"

"If my treatment has really done the good
you say; if she be really better under it, I think
her recovery may be pronounced. But I must
first see her."

The girl was indeed wonderfully better. I
felt that my skill was achieving a signal triumph,
but that day even my intellectual pride was
forgotten in the luxurious unfolding of that sense
of heart which had so newly waked into
blossom.