once forgotten: such good qualities as I might
possess were exaggerated. The public regret
vented and consoled itself in a costly testimonial,
to which even the poorest of my patients
insisted on the privilege to contribute, graced with
an inscription flattering enough to have served
for the epitaph on some great man's tomb. No
one who has served an art and striven for a name,
is a stoic to the esteem of others, and sweet
indeed would such honours have been to me had
not publicity itself seemed a wrong to the
sanctity of that affliction which set Lilian apart
from the movement and the glories of the world.

The two persons most active in " getting up"
this testimonial were, nominally, Colonel Poyntz
—in truth, his wife—and my old disparager, Mr.
Vigors! It is long since my narrative has
referred to Mr. Vigors. It is due to him now to
state that, in his capacity of magistrate, and in
his own way, he had been both active and delicate
in the inquiries set on foot for Lilian during
the unhappy time in which she had wandered,
spellbound, from her home. He, alone of all the
more influential magnates of the town, had
upheld her innocence against the gossip that
aspersed it; and during the last trying year of
my residence at L——, he had sought me, with
frank and manly confessions of his regret for his
former prejudice against me, and assurances of
the respect in which he had held me ever since
my marriage—marriage but in rite—with Lilian.
He had then, strong in his ruling passion,
besought me to consult his clairvoyants as to her
case. I declined this invitation, so as not to
affront him—declined it, not as I should once
have done, but with no word nor look of
incredulous disdain. The fact was, that I had
conceived a solemn terror of all practices and
theories out of the beaten track of sense and
science. Perhaps in my refusal I did wrong. I
know not. I was afraid of my own imagination.
He continued not less friendly in spite of my
refusal. And, such are the vicissitudes in human
feeling, I parted from him whom I had
regarded as my most bigoted foe with a warmer
sentiment of kindness than for any of those on
whom I had counted on friendship. He had not
deserted Lilian, It was not so with Mrs. Poyntz.
I would have paid tenfold the value of the
testimonial to have erased, from the list of those
who subscribed to it, her husband's name.

The day before I quitted L-—- , and some weeks
after I had, in fact, renounced my practice, I
received an urgent entreaty from Miss Brabazon
to call on her. She wrote in lines so blurred
that I could with difficulty decipher them, that
she was very ill, given over by Dr. Jones, who
had been attending her. She implored my
opinion.

CHAPTER LXVII.

On reaching the house, a formal man-servant,
with indifferent face, transferred me to the guid-
ance of a hired nurse, who led me up the stairs,
and, before I was well aware of it, into the room
in which Dr. Lloyd had died. Widely different
indeed, the aspect of the walls, the character of
the furniture. The dingy paper-hangings were
replaced by airy muslins, showing a rose-coloured
ground through their fanciful open-work;
luxurious fauteuils, gilded wardrobes, full-length
mirrors, a toilet-table tricked out with lace and
ribbons, and glittering with an array of silver
gewgaws and jewelled trinkets, all transformed
the sick chamber of the simple man of science
to a boudoir of death for the vain coquette.
But the room itself, in its high lattice and heavy
ceiling, was the same—as the coffin itself has the
same confines whether it be rich in velvets and
bright with blazoning, or rude as a pauper's
shell.

And the bed, with its silken coverlid, and its
pillows edged with the thread-work of Louvain,
stood in the same sharp angle as that over which
had flickered the frowning smoke-reek above the
dying resentful foe. As I approached, a man,
who was seated beside the sufferer, turned
round his face, and gave me a silent kindly nod
of recognition. He was Mr. C., one of the
clergy of the town, the one with whom I had
the most frequently come into contact
wherever the physician resigns to the priest the
language that bids man hope. Mr. C., as a
preacher, was renowned for his touching
eloquence; as a pastor, revered for his benignant
piety; as friend and neighbour, beloved for a
sweetness of nature which seemed to regulate all
the movements of a mind eminently masculine
by the beat of a heart tender as the gentlest
woman's.

This good man, then whispering something to
the sufferer which I did not overhear, stole
towards me, took me by the hand, and said, also in
a whisper, " Be merciful as Christians are." He
led me to the bedside, there left me, went out,
and closed the door.

"Do you think I am really dying, Dr. Fenwick?"
said a feeble voice. " I fear Dr. Jones
has misunderstood my case. I wish I had called
you in at the first, but—but I could not—I could
not! Will you feel my pulse? Don't you think
you could do me good?"

I had no need to feel the pulse in that skeleton
wrist; the aspect of the face sufficed to tell me
that death was drawing near.

Mechanically, however, I went through the
hackneyed formulae of professional questions.
This vain ceremony done; as gently and
delicately as I could, I implied the expediency of
concluding, if not yet settled, those affairs which
relate to this world.

"This duty," I said, "in relieving the mind
from care for others to whom we owe the
forethought of affection, often relieves the body also
of many a gnawing pain, and sometimes, to the
surprise of the most experienced physician,
prolongs life itself."

"Ah," said the old maid, peevishly, "I
understand! But it is not my will that troubles me.
I should not be left to a nurse from a hospital if
my relations did not know that my annuity dies