she rose and kissed my forehead. I thought
my heart would have broken when I felt that spiritlike
melancholy kiss.

And yet how marvellously the human mind
teaches itself to extract consolations from its
sorrows. The least wretched of my hours were
those that I passed in that saddened room, seeking
how to establish fragments of intercourse,
invent signs, by which each might interpret
each, between the intellect I had so laboriously
cultured, so arrogantly vaunted, and the fancies
wandering through the dark, deprived of their
guide in reason. It was something even of joy
to feel myself needed for her guardianship,
endeared and yearned for still by some unshattered
instinct of her heart; and when, parting from her
for the night, I stole the moment in which on
her soft face seemed resting least of shadow, to
ask, in a trembling whisper, "Lilian, are the
angels watching over you?" and she would an-
swer "Yes," sometimes in words, sometimes
with a mysterious happy smile—then—then I
went to my lonely room, comforted and thankful.

CHAPTER LXV.

The blow that had fallen on my hearth effectually,
inevitably killed all the slander that
might have troubled me in joy. Before the awe
of a great calamity the small passions of a mean
malignity slink abashed. I had requested Mrs.
Ashleigh not to mention the vile letter which
Lilian had received. I would not give a triumph
to the unknown calumniator, nor wring forth her
vain remorse, by the pain of acknowledging an indignity
to my darling's honour; yet, somehow or
other, the true cause of Lilian's affliction had crept
out—perhaps through the talk of servants—and
the Public shock was universal. By one of those
instincts of justice that lie deep in human hearts,
though in ordinary moments overlaid by many a
worldly layer, all felt (all mothers felt, especially)
that innocence alone could have been so unprepared
for reproach. The explanation I had previously
given, discredited then, was now
accepted without a question. Lilian's present
state accounted for all that ill nature had before
misconstrued. Her good name was restored to
its maiden whiteness by the fate that had severed
the ties of the bride. The formal dwellers on
the Hill vied with the franker, warmer-hearted
households of Low Town in the nameless attentions
by which sympathy and respect are rather
delicately indicated than noisily proclaimed.
Could Lilian have then recovered and been
sensible of its repentant homage, how reverently
that petty world would have thronged around
her. And, ah! could fortune and man's esteem
have atoned for the blight of hopes that had been
planted and cherished on ground beyond their
reach, ambition and pride might have been well
contented with the largeness of the exchange
that courted their acceptance. Patients on
patients crowded on me. Sympathy with my
sorrow seemed to create and endear a more
trustful belief in my skill. But the profession I
had once so enthusiastically loved became to me
wearisome, insipid, distasteful; the kindness
heaped on me gave no comfort, it but brought
before me more vividly the conviction that it
came too late to avail me: it could not restore
to me the mind, the love, the life of my life, which
lay dark and shattered in the brain of my guileless
Lilian. Secretly I felt a sullen resentment.
I knew that to the crowd the resentment was
unjust. The world itself is but an appearance;
who can blame it if appearances guide its laws?
But to those who had been detached from the
crowd by the professions of friendship—those
who, when the slander was yet new, and might
have been awed into silence had they stood by
my side,—to the pressure of their hands, now, I
had no response.

Against Mrs. Poyntz, above all others, I bore
a remembrance of unrelaxed, unmitigable
indignation. Her schemes for her daughter's
marriage had triumphed: Jane was Mrs. Ashleigh
Sumner. Her mind was, perhaps, softened now
that the object which had sharpened its worldly
faculties was accomplished; but in vain, on first
hearing of my affliction, had this she Machiavel
owned a humane remorse, and, with all her
keen comprehension of each facility that circum-
stance gave to her will, availed herself of the
general compassion to strengthen the popular
reaction in favour of Lilian's assaulted honour—
in vain had she written to me with a gentleness
of sympathy foreign to her habitual characteristics
—in vain besought me to call on her—in
vain waylaid and accosted me with a humility
that almost implored forgiveness; I vouchsafed
no reproach, but I could imply no pardon. I
put between her and my great sorrow the impe-
netrable wall of my freezing silence.

One word of hers at the time that I had so
pathetically besought her aid, and the parrotflock
that repeated her very whisper in noisy
shrillness, would have been as loud to defend as
it had been to defame; that vile letter might
never have been written. Whoever its writer,
it surely was one of the babblers who took their
malice itself from the jest or the nod of their
female despot; and the writer might have
justified herself in saying she did but coarsely
proclaim what the oracle of worldly opinion, and the
early friend of Lilian's own mother, had authorised
her to believe.

By degrees, the bitterness at my heart diffused
itself to the circumference of the circle in which
my life went its cheerless mechanical round.
That cordial brotherhood with his patients,
which is the true physician's happiest gift and
humanest duty, forsook my breast. The warning
words of Mrs. Poyntz had come true. A patient
that monopolised my thoughts awaited me at my
own hearth! My conscience became troubled;
I felt that my skill was lessened. I said to
myself, "The physician who, on entering the
sick room, feels, while there, something that
distracts the finest powers of his intellect from
the sufferer's case, is unfit for his calling." A