As I recrossed the threshold, I smiled on the
brother, who was still lingering there:

"Your sister is saved, Waby. She needs now
chiefly wine and good though light nourishment;
these you will find at my house; call there for
them every day."

"God bless you, sir!  If ever I can serve
you——" His tongue faltered—he could say no more.

Serve me—Allen Fenwick—that poor policeman!
Me, whom a king could not serve!
What did I ask from earth but Fame and Lilian's
heart? Thrones and bread man wins from the
aid of others. Fame and woman's heart he can
only gain through himself.

So I strode gaily up the hill, through the iron
gates into the fairy ground, and stood before
Lilian's home.

The man-servant, on opening the door, seemed
somewhat confused, and said hastily, before
spoke,

"Not at home, sir; a note for you."

I turned the note mechanically in my hand;
I felt stunned.

"Not at home! Miss Ashleigh cannot be
out. How is she?"

"Better, sir, thank you."

I still could not open the note; my eyes
turned wistfully towards the windows of the
house, and there—at the drawing-room window
—I encountered the scowl of Mr. Vigors.  I
coloured with resentment, divined that I was
dismissed, and walked away with a proud crest
and a firm step.

When I was out of the gates, in the blind lane,
I opened the note. It began formally, " Mrs.
Ashleigh presents her compliments," and went
on to thank me, civilly enough, for my attendance
the night before, would not give me the
trouble to repeat my visit, and enclosed a fee,
double the amount of the fee prescribed by custom.
I flung the money, as an asp that had
stung me, over the high wall, and tore the note
into shreds. Having thus idly vented my rage,
a dull gnawing sorrow came heavily down upon
all other emotions, stifling and replacing them.
At the mouth of the lane I halted. I shrank
from the thought of the crowded streets beyond.
I shrank yet more from the routine of duties,
which stretched before me in the desert into
which daily life was so suddenly smitten. I sat
down by the roadside, shading my dejected face
with a nerveless hand. I looked up as the sound
of steps reached my ear, and saw Dr. Jones
coming briskly along the lane, evidently from
Abbots' House. He must have been there at
the very time I had called. I was not only dismissed
but supplanted. I rose before he reached
the spot on which I had seated myself, and went
my way into the town, went through my allotted
round of professional visits, but my attentions
were not so tenderly devoted, my skill so
genially quickened by the glow of benevolence,
as my poorer patients had found them in the
morning.

I have said how the physician should enter the
sick-room. "A Calm Intelligence!"  But if you
strike a blow on the heart, the intellect suffers.
Little worth, I suspect, was my "calm intelligence"
that day.  Bichat, in his famous book
upon Life and Death, divides life into two
classes—animal and organic. Man's intellect,
with the brain for its centre, belongs to life animal;
his passions to life organic, centred in the
heart, in the viscera. Alas! if the noblest
passions through which alone we lift ourselves
into the moral realm of the sublime and beautiful
really have their centre in the life which the
very vegetable, that lives organically, shares
with us! And, alas! if it be that life which we
share with the vegetable, that can cloud,
obstruct, suspend, annul that life centred in the
brain, which we share with every being howsoever
angelic, in every star howsoever remote, on
whom the Creator bestows the faculty of
thought!

CHAPTER XII.

BUT suddenly I remembered Mrs. Poyntz.  I
ought to call on her.  So I closed my round of
visits at her door. But the day was then far
advanced, and the servant politely informed me
that Mrs. Poyntz was at dinner. I could only
leave my card, with a message that I would pay
my respects to her the next day. That evening
I received from her this note:

"DEAR DR. FENWICK,—I regret much that I
cannot have the pleasure of seeing you to-morrow.
Poyntz and I are going to visit his brother, at the
other end of the county, and we start early.  We
shall be away some days. Sorry to hear from Mrs.
Ashleigh that she has been persuaded by Mr. Vigors
to consult Dr. Jones about Lilian. Vigors and
Jones both frighten the poor mother, and insist upon
consumptive tendencies. Unluckily, you seem to
have said there was little the matter. Some doctors
gain their practice, as some preachers fill their
churches, by adroit use of the appeals to terror.
You do not want patients, Dr. Jones does. And,
after all, better perhaps as it is.

                                                  "Yours, &c.

                                                             "M. POYNTZ."

To my more selfish grief anxiety for Lilian
was now added.  I had seen many more patients
die from being mistreated for consumption than
from consumption itself. And Dr. Jones was a
mercenary, cunning, needy man, with much
crafty knowledge of human foibles, but very
little skill in the treatment of human
maladies. My fears were soon confirmed.
A few days after I heard from Miss
Brabazon that Miss Ashleigh was seriously ill,
kept her room. Mrs. Ashleigh made this
excuse for not immediately returning the visits
which the Hill had showered upon her. Miss
Brabazon had seen Dr. Jones, who had shaken
his head, said it was a serious case; but that
time and care (his time and his care!) might
effect wonders.

How stealthily at the dead of the night I
would climb the Hill, and look towards the
vindows of the old sombre house—one window,
in which a light burnt dim and mournful, the
ight of a sick-room—of hers!

At length Mrs. Poyntz came back, and I