A STRANGE STORY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF " MY NOVEL," " RIENZI," &c.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE next day I had just dismissed the last of
my visiting patients, and was about to enter my
carriage and commence my round, when I
received a twisted note containing but these
words:

"Call on me to-day, as soon as you can.

"M. POYNTZ."

A few minutes afterwards I was in Mrs.
Poyntz's drawing-room.

"Well, Allen Fenwick," said she, "I do not
serve friends by halves. No thanks! I but
adhere to a principle I have laid down for
myself. I spent last evening with the Ashleighs.
Lilian is certainly much altered—very weak, I
fear very ill, and I believe very unskilfully treated
by Dr. Jones. I felt that it was my duty to insist
on a change of physician, but there was
something else to consider before deciding who that
physician should be. I was bound, as your
confidant, to consult your own scruples of honour.
Of course I could not say point-blank to Mrs.
Ashleigh, ' Dr. Fenwick admires your daughter,
would you object to him as a son-in-law?' Of
course I could not touch at all on the secret
with which you entrusted me; but I have not
the less arrived at a conclusion, in agreement
with my previous belief, that not being a woman
of the world, Anne Ashleigh has none of the
ambition which women of the world would
conceive for a daughter who has a good fortune,
and considerable beauty; that her predominant
anxiety is for her child's happiness, and her
predominant fear is that her child will die. She
would never oppose any attachment which
Lilian might form, and if that attachment were
for one who had preserved her daughter's life,
I believe her own heart would gratefully go
with her daughter's. So far, then, as honour
is concerned, all scruples vanish."

I sprang from my seat, radiant with joy.
Mrs. Poyntz dryly continued: "You value yourself
on your common sense, and to that I
address a few words of counsel which may not be
welcome to your romance. I said that I did
not think you and Lilian would suit each other
in the long run; reflection confirms me in
that supposition. Do not look at me so
incredulously and so sadly. Listen, and take heed.
Ask yourself what, as a man whose days are
devoted to a laborious profession, whose ambition
is entwined with its success, whose mind
must be absorbed in its pursuits—ask yourself
what kind of wife you would have sought to
win, had not this sudden fancy for a charming
face rushed over your better reason, and obliterated
all previous plans and resolutions. Surely
some one with whom your heart would have
been quite at rest; by whom your thoughts
would have been undistracted from the channels
into which your calling should concentrate
their flow; in short, a serene companion in the
quiet holiday of a trustful home. Is it not
so?"

"You interpret my own thoughts when they
have turned towards marriage. But what is there
in Lilian Ashleigh that should mar the picture
you have drawn?"

"What is there in Lilian Ashleigh which in
the least accords with the picture? In the first
place, the wife of a young physician should not
be his perpetual patient. The more he loves her,
and the more worthy she may be of love, the
more her case will haunt him wherever he goes.
When he returns home, it is not to a holiday; the
patient he most cares for, the anxiety that most
gnaws him, await him there."

"But, good Heavens! why should Lilian
Ashleigh be a perpetual patient? The sanitary
resources of youth are incalculable. And——"

"Let me stop you; I cannot argue against a
physician in love! I will give up that point in
dispute, remaining convinced that there is a
something in Lilian's constitution which will
perplex, torment, and baffle you. It was so with
her father, whom she resembles in face and in
character. He showed no symptoms of any
grave malady. His outward form was like
Lilian's, a model of symmetry, except in this,
that, like hers, it was too exquisitely delicate;
but, when seemingly in the midst of perfect
health, at any slight jar on the nerves he would
become alarmingly ill. I was sure that he would
die young, and he did so."

"Ay, but Mrs. Ashleigh said that his death
was from brain fever, brought on by over study.
Rarely, indeed, do women so fatigue the brain.
No female patient, in the range of my practice,
ever died of purely mental exertion."

"Of purely mental exertion, no; but of
heart emotion, many female patients, perhaps?