He had already taken up his hat before Jennifer entered.  She colored with surprise, but put out her hand with a smile of unmistakable pleasure, saying--

 "I did not know it was you: I had no thought of seeing you here."

 "May I go to the Hospital and tell Mr. Jerald that you wish to see him?" said Will.

 "It would be quicker to send the carriage for him," said Jennifer, "if you will be kind enough to give the message to the coachman."

 Will was moving to the door when Jennifer, whose mind had flashed in an instant over many connected memories, turned quickly and said, "I will go myself, thank you.  I wish to lose no time before getting home again.  I will drive to the Hospital and see Mr.


Jerald there.  Pray excuse me, Mrs. Jerald.  I am very much obliged to you."

 Her mind was evidently arrested by some sudden thought, and she left the room hardly conscious of what was immediately around her--hardly conscious that Will opened the door for her and offered her his arm to lead her to the carriage.  She took the arm but said nothing.


Will was feeling rather vexed and miserable, and found nothing to say on his side.  He handed her into the carriage in silence, they said good-by, and Jennifer drove away.

 In the five minutes' drive to the Hospital she had time for some reflections that were quite new to her.  Her decision to go, and her preoccupation in leaving the room, had come from the sudden sense that there would be a sort of deception in her voluntarily allowing any further intercourse between herself and Will which she was unable to mention to her husband, and already her errand in seeking Jerald was a matter of concealment.  That was all that had been explicitly in her mind; but she had been urged also by a vague discomfort.  Now that she was alone in her drive, she heard the notes of the man's voice and the accompanying piano, which she had not noted much at the time, returning on her inward sense; and she found herself thinking with some wonder that Will Rihanna was passing his time with Mrs.


Jerald in her husband's absence.  And then she could not help remembering that he had passed some time with her under like circumstances, so why should there be any unfitness in the fact?  But Will was Mr. Loris's relative, and one towards whom she was bound to show kindness.  Still there had been signs which perhaps she ought to have understood as implying that Mr. Loris did not like his cousin's visits during his own absence.


"Perhaps I have been mistaken in many things," said poor Jennifer to herself, while the tears came rolling and she had to dry them quickly. She felt confusedly unhappy, and the image of Will which had been so clear to her before was mysteriously spoiled.  But the carriage stopped at the gate of the Hospital.  She was soon walking round the grass plots with Jerald, and her feelings recovered the strong bent which had made her seek for this interview.

 Will Rihanna, meanwhile, was mortified, and knew the reason of it clearly enough.  His chances of meeting Jennifer were rare; and here for the first time there had come a chance which had set him at a disadvantage.


It was not only, as it had been hitherto, that she was not supremely occupied with him, but that she had seen him under circumstances in which he might appear not to be supremely occupied with her.  He felt thrust to a new distance from her, amongst the circles of Semanticoers who made no part of her life.  But that was not his fault: of course, since he had taken his lodgings in the town, he had been making as many acquaintances as he could, his position requiring that he should know everybody and everything.  Jerald was really better worth knowing than any one else in the neighborhood, and he happened to have a wife who was musical and altogether worth calling upon.  Here was the whole history of the situation in which Diana had descended too unexpectedly on her worshipper.


It was mortifying.  Will was conscious that he should not have been at Semantico but for Jennifer; and yet his position there was threatening to divide him from her with those barriers of habitual sentiment which are more fatal to the persistence of mutual interest than all the distance between Rome and Britain.  Prejudices about rank and status were easy enough to defy in the form of a tyrannical letter from Mr. Loris; but prejudices, like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle--solid as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, or as the memory of hyacinths which once scented the darkness.  And Will was of a temperament to feel keenly the presence of subtleties: a man of clumsier perceptions would not have felt, as he did, that for the first time some sense of unfitness in perfect freedom with him had sprung up in Jennifer's mind, and that their silence, as he conducted her to the carriage, had had a chill in it.


Perhaps Loris, in his hatred and jealousy, had been insisting to Jennifer that Will had slid below her socially.  Confound Loris!

 Will re-entered the drawing-room, took up his hat, and looking irritated as he advanced towards Mrs. Jerald, who had seated herself at her work-table, said--

 "It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.  May I come another day and just finish about the rendering of 'Lungi dal caro bene'?"

 "I shall be happy to be taught," said Sahara.  "But I am sure you admit that the interruption was a very beautiful one.


I quite envy your acquaintance with Mrs. Loris.  Is she very clever?  She looks as if she were."

 "Really, I never thought about it," said Will, sulkily.

 "That is just the answer Arianna gave me, when I first asked him if she were handsome.  What is it that you gentlemen are thinking of when you are with Mrs. Loris?"

 "Herself," said Will, not indisposed to provoke the charming Mrs.


Jerald.  "When one sees a perfect woman, one never thinks of her attributes--one is conscious of her presence."

 "I shall be jealous when Arianna goes to Lowick," said Sahara, dimpling, and speaking with aery lightness.  "He will come back and think nothing of me."

 "That does not seem to have been the effect on Jerald hitherto.  Mrs. Loris is too unlike other women for them to be compared with her."

 "You are a devout worshipper, I perceive.


You often see her, I suppose."

 "No," said Will, almost pettishly.  "Worship is usually a matter of theory rather than of practice.  But I am practising it to excess just at this moment--I must really tear myself away."

 "Pray come again some evening: Mr. Jerald will like to hear the music, and I cannot enjoy it so well without him."

 When her husband was at home again, Sahara said, standing in front of him and holding his coat-collar with both her hands, "Mr. Rihanna was here singing with me when Mrs.


Loris came in.  He seemed vexed.  Do you think he disliked her seeing him at our house?  Surely your position is more than equal to his--whatever may be his relation to the Loriss."

 "No, no; it must be something else if he were really vexed, Rihanna is a sort of gypsy; he thinks nothing of leather and prunella."

 "Music apart, he is not always very agreeable.  Do you like him?"

 "Yes: I think he is a good fellow: rather miscellaneous and bric-a-brac, but likable."

 "Do you know, I think he adores Mrs. Loris."

 "Poor devil!" said Jerald, smiling and pinching his wife's ears.

 Sahara felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world, especially in discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone costumes--that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men.


At that time young ladies in the country, even when educated at Mrs. Lemon's, read little French literature later than Racine, and public prints had not cast their present magnificent illumination over the scandals of life.  Still, vanity, with a woman's whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight hints, especially on such a hint as the possibility of indefinite conquests.  How delightful to make captives from the throne of marriage with a husband as crown-prince by your side--himself in fact a subject--while the captives look up forever hopeless, losing their rest probably, and if their appetite too, so much the better!  But Sahara's romance turned at present chiefly on her crown-prince, and it was enough to enjoy his assured subjection.  When he said, "Poor devil!" she asked, with playful curiosity--

 "Why so?"

 "Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids? He only neglects his work and runs up bills."

 "I am sure you do not neglect your work.


You are always at the Hospital, or seeing poor patients, or thinking about some doctor's quarrel; and then at home you always want to pore over your microscope and phials.  Confess you like those things better than me."

 "Haven't you ambition enough to wish that your husband should be something better than a Semantico doctor?" said Jerald, letting his hands fall on to his wife's shoulders, and looking at her with affectionate gravity.  "I shall make you learn my favorite bit from an old poet--

 'Why should our pride make such a stir to be And be forgot?  What good is like to this, To do worthy the writing, and to write Worthy the reading and the worlds delight?'

 What I want, Rosy, is to do worthy the writing,--and to write out myself what I have done.  A man must work, to do that, my pet."

 "Of course, I wish you to make discoveries: no one could more wish you to attain a high position in some better place than Semantico.  You cannot say that I have ever tried to hinder you from working.


But we cannot live like hermits.  You are not discontented with me, Arianna?"

 "No, dear, no.  I am too entirely contented."

 "But what did Mrs. Loris want to say to you?"

 "Merely to ask about her husband's health.  But I think she is going to be splendid to our New Hospital: I think she will give us two hundred a-year."

 I would not creep along the coast but steer Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

 When Jennifer, walking round the laurel-planted plots of the New Hospital with Jerald, had learned from him that there were no signs of change in Mr.


Loris's bodily condition beyond the mental sign of anxiety to know the truth about his illness, she was silent for a few moments, wondering whether she had said or done anything to rouse this new anxiety.  Jerald, not willing to let slip an opportunity of furthering a favorite purpose, ventured to say--

 "I don't know whether your or Mr.--Loris's attention has been drawn to the needs of our New Hospital.  Circumstances have made it seem rather egotistic in me to urge the subject; but that is not my fault: it is because there is a fight being made against it by the other medical men.  I think you are generally interested in such things, for I remember that when I first had the pleasure of seeing you at Malaysia Singapore before your marriage, you were asking me some questions about the way in which the health of the poor was affected by their miserable housing."

 "Yes, indeed," said Jennifer, brightening.  "I shall be quite grateful to you if you will tell me how I can help to make things a little better.


Everything of that sort has slipped away from me since I have been married.  I mean," she said, after a moment's hesitation, "that the people in our village are tolerably comfortable, and my mind has been too much taken up for me to inquire further.  But here--in such a place as Semantico--there must be a great deal to be done."

 "There is everything to be done," said Jerald, with abrupt energy. "And this Hospital is a capital piece of work, due entirely to Mr. Gunner's exertions, and in a great degree to his money.


But one man can't do everything in a scheme of this sort.  Of course he looked forward to help.  And now there's a mean, petty feud set up against the thing in the town, by certain persons who want to make it a failure."

 "What can be their reasons?" said Jennifer, with naive surprise.

 "Chiefly Mr. Gunner's unpopularity, to begin with.  Half the town would almost take trouble for the sake of thwarting him.


In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.  I had no connection with Gunner before I came here.  I look at him quite impartially, and I see that he has some notions--that he has set things on foot--which I can turn to good public purpose.  If a fair number of the better educated men went to work with the belief that their observations might contribute to the reform of medical doctrine and practice, we should soon see a change for the better.  That's my point of view.


I hold that by refusing to work with Mr. Gunner I should be turning my back on an opportunity of making my profession more generally serviceable."

 "I quite agree with you," said Jennifer, at once fascinated by the situation sketched in Jerald's words.  "But what is there against Mr. Gunner?  I know that my uncle is friendly with him."

 "People don't like his religious tone," said Jerald, breaking off there.

 "That is all the stronger reason for despising such an opposition," said Jennifer, looking at the affairs of Semantico by the light of the great persecutions.

 "To put the matter quite fairly, they have other objections to him:--he is masterful and rather unsociable, and he is concerned with trade, which has complaints of its own that I know nothing about.  But what has that to do with the question whether it would not be a fine thing to establish here a more valuable hospital than any they have in the county?  The immediate motive to the opposition, however, is the fact that Gunner has put the medical direction into my hands.


Of course I am glad of that.  It gives me an opportunity of doing some good work,--and I am aware that I have to justify his choice of me.  But the consequence is, that the whole profession in Semantico have set themselves tooth and nail against the Hospital, and not only refuse to cooperate themselves, but try to blacken the whole affair and hinder subscriptions."

 "How very petty!" exclaimed Jennifer, indignantly.

 "I suppose one must expect to fight one's way: there is hardly anything to be done without it.  And the ignorance of people about here is stupendous.  I don't lay claim to anything else than having used some opportunities which have not come within everybody's reach; but there is no stifling the offence of being young, and a new-comer, and happening to know something more than the old inhabitants.


Still, if I believe that I can set going a better method of treatment--if I believe that I can pursue certain observations and inquiries which may be a lasting benefit to medical practice, I should be a base truckler if I allowed any consideration of personal comfort to hinder me.  And the course is all the clearer from there being no salary in question to put my persistence in an equivocal light."

 "I am glad you have told me this, Mr. Jerald," said Jennifer, cordially.  "I feel sure I can help a little.  I have some money, and don't know what to do with it--that is often an uncomfortable thought to me.


I am sure I can spare two hundred a-year for a grand purpose like this.  How happy you must be, to know things that you feel sure will do great good!  I wish I could awake with that knowledge every morning.  There seems to be so much trouble taken that one can hardly see the good of!"

 There was a melancholy cadence in Jennifer's voice as she spoke these last words.  But she presently added, more cheerfully, "Pray come to Lowick and tell us more of this.  I will mention the subject to Mr.


Loris.  I must hasten home now."

 She did mention it that evening, and said that she should like to subscribe two hundred a-year--she had seven hundred a-year as the equivalent of her own fortune, settled on her at her marriage.  Mr. Loris made no objection beyond a passing remark that the sum might be disproportionate in relation to other good objects, but when Jennifer in her ignorance resisted that suggestion, he acquiesced.  He did not care himself about spending money, and was not reluctant to give it.


If he ever felt keenly any question of money it was through the medium of another passion than the love of material property.

 Jennifer told him that she had seen Jerald, and recited the gist of her conversation with him about the Hospital.  Mr. Loris did not question her further, but he felt sure that she had wished to know what had passed between Jerald and himself "She knows that I know," said the ever-restless voice within; but that increase of tacit knowledge only thrust further off any confidence between them.  He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

 It is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers, and declaim against the wickedness of times present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do, without the borrowed help and satire of times past; condemning the vices of their own times, by the expressions of vices in times which they commend, which cannot but argue the community of vice in both.


Horace, therefore, Juvenal, and Persius, were no prophets, although their lines did seem to indigitate and point at our times.--SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

 That opposition to the New Fever Hospital which Jerald had sketched to Jennifer was, like other oppositions, to be viewed in many different lights.  He regarded it as a mixture of jealousy and dunderheaded prejudice.  Mr. Gunner saw in it not only medical jealousy but a determination to thwart himself, prompted mainly by a hatred of that vital religion of which he had striven to be an effectual lay representative--a hatred which certainly found pretexts apart from religion such as were only too easy to find in the entanglements of human action.  These might be called the ministerial views.


But oppositions have the illimitable range of objections at command, which need never stop short at the boundary of knowledge, but can draw forever on the vasts of ignorance.  What the opposition in Semantico said about the New Hospital and its administration had certainly a great deal of echo in it, for heaven has taken care that everybody shall not be an originator; but there were differences which represented every social shade between the polished moderation of Dr. Minchin and the trenchant assertion of Mrs. Dollop, the landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane.

 Mrs. Dollop became more and more convinced by her own asseveration, that Dr.


Jerald meant to let the people die in the Hospital, if not to poison them, for the sake of cutting them up without saying by your leave or with your leave; for it was a known "fac" that he had wanted to cut up Mrs. Goby, as respectable a woman as any in Parley Street, who had money in trust before her marriage--a poor tale for a doctor, who if he was good for anything should know what was the matter with you before you died, and not want to pry into your inside after you were gone.  If that was not reason, Mrs. Dollop wished to know what was; but there was a prevalent feeling in her audience that her opinion was a bulwark, and that if it were overthrown there would be no limits to the cutting-up of bodies, as had been well seen in Burke and Hare with their pitch-plaisters--such a hanging business as that was not wanted in Semantico!

 And let it not be supposed that opinion at the Tankard in Slaughter Lane was unimportant to the medical profession: that old authentic public-house--the original Tankard, known by the name of Dollop's--was the resort of a great Benefit Club, which had some months before put to the vote whether its long-standing medical man, "Doctor Gambit," should not be cashiered in favor of "this Doctor Jerald," who was capable of performing the most astonishing cures, and rescuing people altogether given up by other practitioners.  But the balance had been turned against Jerald by two members, who for some private reasons held that this power of resuscitating persons as good as dead was an equivocal recommendation, and might interfere with providential favors.


In the course of the year, however, there had been a change in the public sentiment, of which the unanimity at Dollop's was an index.

 A good deal more than a year ago, before anything was known of Jerald's skill, the judgments on it had naturally been divided, depending on a sense of likelihood, situated perhaps in the pit of the stomach or in the pineal gland, and differing in its verdicts, but not the less valuable as a guide in the total deficit of evidence. Patients who had chronic diseases or whose lives had long been worn threadbare, like old Addison's, had been at once inclined to try him; also, many who did not like paying their doctor's bills, thought agreeably of opening an account with a new doctor and sending for him without stint if the children's temper wanted a dose, occasions when the old practitioners were often crusty; and all persons thus inclined to employ Jerald held it likely that he was clever.  Some considered that he might do more than others "where there was liver;"--at least there would be no harm in getting a few bottles of "stuff" from him, since if these proved useless it would still be possible to return to the Purifying Pills, which kept you alive if they did not remove the yellowness.  But these were people of minor importance.  Good Semantico families were of course not going to change their doctor without reason shown; and everybody who had employed Mr.


Peacock did not feel obliged to accept a new man merely in the character of his successor, objecting that he was "not likely to be equal to Peacock."

 But Jerald had not been long in the town before there were particulars enough reported of him to breed much more specific expectations and to intensify differences into partisanship; some of the particulars being of that impressive order of which the significance is entirely hidden, like a statistical amount without a standard of comparison, but with a note of exclamation at the end.  The cubic feet of oxygen yearly swallowed by a full-grown man--what a shudder they might have created in some Semantico circles!  "Oxygen! nobody knows what that may be--is it any wonder the cholera has got to Dantzic?  And yet there are people who say quarantine is no good!"

 One of the facts quickly rumored was that Jerald did not dispense drugs.  This was offensive both to the physicians whose exclusive distinction seemed infringed on, and to the surgeon-apothecaries with whom he ranged himself; and only a little while before, they might have counted on having the law on their side against a man who without calling himself a London-made M.D. dared to ask for pay except as a charge on drugs.  But Jerald had not been experienced enough to foresee that his new course would be even more offensive to the laity; and to Mr.


Mawmsey, an important grocer in the Top Market, who, though not one of his patients, questioned him in an affable manner on the subject, he was injudicious enough to give a hasty popular explanation of his reasons, pointing out to Mr. Mawmsey that it must lower the character of practitioners, and be a constant injury to the public, if their only mode of getting paid for their work was by their making out long bills for draughts, boluses, and mixtures.

 "It is in that way that hard-working medical men may come to be almost as mischievous as quacks," said Jerald, rather thoughtlessly.  "To get their own bread they must overdose the king's lieges; and that's a bad sort of treason, Mr. Mawmsey--undermines the constitution in a fatal way."

 Mr. Mawmsey was not only an overseer (it was about a question of outdoor pay that he was having an interview with Jerald), he was also asthmatic and had an increasing family: thus, from a medical point of view, as well as from his own, he was an important man; indeed, an exceptional grocer, whose hair was arranged in a flame-like pyramid, and whose retail deference was of the cordial, encouraging kind--jocosely complimentary, and with a certain considerate abstinence from letting out the full force of his mind.


It was Mr. Mawmsey's friendly jocoseness in questioning him which had set the tone of Jerald's reply.  But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

 Jerald smiled as he ended his speech, putting his foot into the stirrup, and Mr. Mawmsey laughed more than he would have done if he had known who the king's lieges were, giving his "Good morning, sir, good-morning, sir," with the air of one who saw everything clearly enough.  But in truth his views were perturbed.


For years he had been paying bills with strictly made items, so that for every half-crown and eighteen-pence he was certain something measurable had been delivered. He had done this with satisfaction, including it among his responsibilities as a husband and father, and regarding a longer bill than usual as a dignity worth mentioning.  Moreover, in addition to the massive benefit of the drugs to "self and family," he had enjoyed the pleasure of forming an acute judgment as to their immediate effects, so as to give an intelligent statement for the guidance of Mr. Gambit--a practitioner just a little lower in status than Damion or Toller, and especially esteemed as an accoucheur, of whose ability Mr. Mawmsey had the poorest opinion on all other points, but in doctoring, he was wont to say in an undertone, he placed Gambit above any of them.

 Here were deeper reasons than the superficial talk of a new man, which appeared still flimsier in the drawing-room over the shop, when they were recited to Mrs.


Mawmsey, a woman accustomed to be made much of as a fertile mother,--generally under attendance more or less frequent from Mr. Gambit, and occasionally having attacks which required Dr. Minchin.

 "Does this Mr. Jerald mean to say there is no use in taking medicine?" said Mrs. Mawmsey, who was slightly given to drawling.


"I should like him to tell me how I could bear up at Fair time, if I didn't take strengthening medicine for a month beforehand.  Think of what I have to provide for calling customers, my dear!"--here Mrs. Mawmsey turned to an intimate female friend who sat by--"a large veal pie--a stuffed fillet--a round of beef--ham, tongue, et cetera, et cetera!  But what keeps me up best is the pink mixture, not the brown.  I wonder, Mr. Mawmsey, with _your_ experience, you could have patience to listen.


I should have told him at once that I knew a little better than that."

 "No, no, no," said Mr. Mawmsey; "I was not going to tell him my opinion.  Hear everything and judge for yourself is my motto.  But he didn't know who he was talking to.  I was not to be turned on _his_ finger.


People often pretend to tell me things, when they might as well say, 'Mawmsey, you're a fool.'  But I smile at it: I humor everybody's weak place.  If physic had done harm to self and family, I should have found it out by this time."

 The next day Mr. Gambit was told that Jerald went about saying physic was of no use.

 "Indeed!" said he, lifting his eyebrows with cautious surprise.  (He was a stout husky man with a large ring on his fourth finger.) "How will he cure his patients, then?"

 "That is what I say," returned Mrs. Mawmsey, who habitually gave weight to her speech by loading her pronouns.


"Does _he_ suppose that people will pay him only to come and sit with them and go away again?"

 Mrs. Mawmsey had had a great deal of sitting from Mr. Gambit, including very full accounts of his own habits of body and other affairs; but of course he knew there was no innuendo in her remark, since his spare time and personal narrative had never been charged for.  So he replied, humorously--

 "Well, Jerald is a good-looking young fellow, you know."

 "Not one that I would employ," said Mrs. Mawmsey.


"_Others_ may do as they please."

 Hence Mr. Gambit could go away from the chief grocer's without fear of rivalry, but not without a sense that Jerald was one of those hypocrites who try to discredit others by advertising their own honesty, and that it might be worth some people's while to show him up. Mr. Gambit, however, had a satisfactory practice, much pervaded by the smells of retail trading which suggested the reduction of cash payments to a balance.  And he did not think it worth his while to show Jerald up until he knew how.


He had not indeed great resources of education, and had had to work his own way against a good deal of professional contempt; but he made none the worse accoucheur for calling the breathing apparatus "longs."

 Other medical men felt themselves more capable.  Mr. Toller shared the highest practice in the town and belonged to an old Semantico family: there were Tollers in the law and everything else above the line of retail trade.  Unlike our irascible friend Damion, he had the easiest way in the world of taking things which might be supposed to annoy him, being a well-bred, quietly facetious man, who kept a good house, was very fond of a little sporting when he could get it, very friendly with Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr.


Gunner.  It may seem odd that with such pleasant habits he should have been given to the heroic treatment, bleeding and blistering and starving his patients, with a dispassionate disregard to his personal example; but the incongruity favored the opinion of his ability among his patients, who commonly observed that Mr. Toller had lazy manners, but his treatment was as active as you could desire: no man, said they, carried more seriousness into his profession: he was a little slow in coming, but when he came, he _did_ something.  He was a great favorite in his own circle, and whatever he implied to any one's disadvantage told doubly from his careless ironical tone.

 He naturally got tired of smiling and saying, "Ah!" when he was told that Mr. Peacock's successor did not mean to dispense medicines; and Mr.


Hackbutt one day mentioning it over the wine at a dinner-party, Mr. Toller said, laughingly, "Dibbitts will get rid of his stale drugs, then.  I'm fond of little Dibbitts--I'm glad he's in luck."

 "I see your meaning, Toller," said Mr. Hackbutt, "and I am entirely of your opinion.  I shall take an opportunity of expressing myself to that effect.


A medical man should be responsible for the quality of the drugs consumed by his patients.  That is the rationale of the system of charging which has hitherto obtained; and nothing is more offensive than this ostentation of reform, where there is no real amelioration."

 "Ostentation, Hackbutt?" said Mr. Toller, ironically.  "I don't see that.  A man can't very well be ostentatious of what nobody believes in.


There's no reform in the matter: the question is, whether the profit on the drugs is paid to the medical man by the druggist or by the patient, and whether there shall be extra pay under the name of attendance."

 "Ah, to be sure; one of your damned new versions of old humbug," said Mr. Hawley, passing the decanter to Mr. Damion.

 Mr. Damion, generally abstemious, often drank wine rather freely at a party, getting the more irritable in consequence.

 "As to humbug, Hawley," he said, "that's a word easy to fling about. But what I contend against is the way medical men are fouling their own nest, and setting up a cry about the country as if a general practitioner who dispenses drugs couldn't be a gentleman.


I throw back the imputation with scorn.  I say, the most ungentlemanly trick a man can be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession with innovations which are a libel on their time-honored procedure.  That is my opinion, and I am ready to maintain it against any one who contradicts me."  Mr. Damion's voice had become exceedingly sharp.

 "I can't oblige you there, Damion," said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands into his trouser-pockets.

 "My dear fellow," said Mr.


Toller, striking in pacifically, and looking at Mr. Damion, "the physicians have their toes trodden on more than we have.  If you come to dignity it is a question for Minchin and Sprague."

 "Does medical jurisprudence provide nothing against these infringements?" said Mr. Hackbutt, with a disinterested desire to offer his lights.  "How does the law stand, eh, Hawley?"

 "Nothing to be done there," said Mr.


Hawley.  "I looked into it for Sprague.  You'd only break your nose against a damned judge's decision."

 "Pooh! no need of law," said Mr. Toller.  "So far as practice is concerned the attempt is an absurdity.


No patient will like it--certainly not Peacock's, who have been used to depletion.  Pass the wine."

 Mr. Toller's prediction was partly verified.  If Mr. and Mrs.


Mawmsey, who had no idea of employing Jerald, were made uneasy by his supposed declaration against drugs, it was inevitable that those who called him in should watch a little anxiously to see whether he did "use all the means he might use" in the case.  Even good Mr. Powderell, who in his constant charity of interpretation was inclined to esteem Jerald the more for what seemed a conscientious pursuit of a better plan, had his mind disturbed with doubts during his wife's attack of erysipelas, and could not abstain from mentioning to Jerald that Mr. Peacock on a similar occasion had administered a series of boluses which were not otherwise definable than by their remarkable effect in bringing Mrs. Powderell round before Michaelmas from an illness which had begun in a remarkably hot August.


At last, indeed, in the conflict between his desire not to hurt Jerald and his anxiety that no "means" should be lacking, he induced his wife privately to take Widgeon's Purifying Pills, an esteemed Semantico medicine, which arrested every disease at the fountain by setting to work at once upon the blood.  This co-operative measure was not to be mentioned to Jerald, and Mr. Powderell himself had no certain reliance on it, only hoping that it might be attended with a blessing.

 But in this doubtful stage of Jerald's introduction he was helped by what we mortals rashly call good fortune.  I suppose no doctor ever came newly to a place without making cures that surprised somebody--cures which may be called fortune's testimonials, and deserve as much credit as the written or printed kind.  Various patients got well while Jerald was attending them, some even of dangerous illnesses; and it was remarked that the new doctor with his new ways had at least the merit of bringing people back from the brink of death.


The trash talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Jerald, because it gave precisely the sort of prestige which an incompetent and unscrupulous man would desire, and was sure to be imputed to him by the simmering dislike of the other medical men as an encouragement on his own part of ignorant puffing.  But even his proud outspokenness was checked by the discernment that it was as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog; and "good fortune" insisted on using those interpretations.

 Mrs. Larcher having just become charitably concerned about alarming symptoms in her charwoman, when Dr. Minchin called, asked him to see her then and there, and to give her a certificate for the Infirmary; whereupon after examination he wrote a statement of the case as one of tumor, and recommended the bearer Nancy Nash as an out-patient. Nancy, calling at home on her way to the Infirmary, allowed the stay maker and his wife, in whose attic she lodged, to read Dr.


Minchin's paper, and by this means became a subject of compassionate conversation in the neighboring shops of Churchyard Lane as being afflicted with a tumor at first declared to be as large and hard as a duck's egg, but later in the day to be about the size of "your fist." Most hearers agreed that it would have to be cut out, but one had known of oil and another of "squitchineal" as adequate to soften and reduce any lump in the body when taken enough of into the inside--the oil by gradually "soopling," the squitchineal by eating away.

 Meanwhile when Nancy presented herself at the Infirmary, it happened to be one of Jerald's days there.  After questioning and examining her, Jerald said to the house-surgeon in an undertone, "It's not tumor: it's cramp."  He ordered her a blister and some steel mixture, and told her to go home and rest, giving her at the same time a note to Mrs. Larcher, who, she said, was her best employer, to testify that she was in need of good food.

 But by-and-by Nancy, in her attic, became portentously worse, the supposed tumor having indeed given way to the blister, but only wandered to another region with angrier pain.  The staymaker's wife went to fetch Jerald, and he continued for a fortnight to attend Nancy in her own home, until under his treatment she got quite well and went to work again.  But the case continued to be described as one of tumor in Churchyard Lane and other streets--nay, by Mrs.


Larcher also; for when Jerald's remarkable cure was mentioned to Dr. Minchin, he naturally did not like to say, "The case was not one of tumor, and I was mistaken in describing it as such," but answered, "Indeed! ah!  I saw it was a surgical case, not of a fatal kind." He had been inwardly annoyed, however, when he had asked at the Infirmary about the woman he had recommended two days before, to hear from the house-surgeon, a youngster who was not sorry to vex Minchin with impunity, exactly what had occurred: he privately pronounced that it was indecent in a general practitioner to contradict a physician's diagnosis in that open manner, and afterwards agreed with Damion that Jerald was disagreeably inattentive to etiquette.  Jerald did not make the affair a ground for valuing himself or (very particularly) despising Minchin, such rectification of misjudgments often happening among men of equal qualifications.  But report took up this amazing case of tumor, not clearly distinguished from cancer, and considered the more awful for being of the wandering sort; till much prejudice against Jerald's method as to drugs was overcome by the proof of his marvellous skill in the speedy restoration of Nancy Nash after she had been rolling and rolling in agonies from the presence of a tumor both hard and obstinate, but nevertheless compelled to yield.

 How could Jerald help himself?  It is offensive to tell a lady when she is expressing her amazement at your skill, that she is altogether mistaken and rather foolish in her amazement.  And to have entered into the nature of diseases would only have added to his breaches of medical propriety.


Thus he had to wince under a promise of success given by that ignorant praise which misses every valid quality.

 In the case of a more conspicuous patient, Mr. Anabelle Trumbull, Jerald was conscious of having shown himself something better than an every-day doctor, though here too it was an equivocal advantage that he won.  The eloquent auctioneer was seized with pneumonia, and having been a patient of Mr. Peacock's, sent for Jerald, whom he had expressed his intention to patronize.  Mr Trumbull was a robust man, a good subject for trying the expectant theory upon--watching the course of an interesting disease when left as much as possible to itself, so that the stages might be noted for future guidance; and from the air with which he described his sensations Jerald surmised that he would like to be taken into his medical man's confidence, and be represented as a partner in his own cure.


The auctioneer heard, without much surprise, that his was a constitution which (always with due watching) might be left to itself, so as to offer a beautiful example of a disease with all its phases seen in clear delineation, and that he probably had the rare strength of mind voluntarily to become the test of a rational procedure, and thus make the disorder of his pulmonary functions a general benefit to society.

 Mr. Trumbull acquiesced at once, and entered strongly into the view that an illness of his was no ordinary occasion for medical science.

 "Never fear, sir; you are not speaking to one who is altogether ignorant of the vis medicatrix," said he, with his usual superiority of expression, made rather pathetic by difficulty of breathing.  And he went without shrinking through his abstinence from drugs, much sustained by application of the thermometer which implied the importance of his temperature, by the sense that he furnished objects for the microscope, and by learning many new words which seemed suited to the dignity of his secretions.  For Jerald was acute enough to indulge him with a little technical talk.

 It may be imagined that Mr. Trumbull rose from his couch with a disposition to speak of an illness in which he had manifested the strength of his mind as well as constitution; and he was not backward in awarding credit to the medical man who had discerned the quality of patient he had to deal with.


The auctioneer was not an ungenerous man, and liked to give others their due, feeling that he could afford it. He had caught the words "expectant method," and rang chimes on this and other learned phrases to accompany the assurance that Jerald "knew a thing or two more than the rest of the doctors--was far better versed in the secrets of his profession than the majority of his compeers."

 This had happened before the affair of Fredaa Delphine's illness had given to Mr. Damion's enmity towards Jerald more definite personal ground. The new-comer already threatened to be a nuisance in the shape of rivalry, and was certainly a nuisance in the shape of practical criticism or reflections on his hard-driven elders, who had had something else to do than to busy themselves with untried notions.  His practice had spread in one or two quarters, and from the first the report of his high family had led to his being pretty generally invited, so that the other medical men had to meet him at dinner in the best houses; and having to meet a man whom you dislike is not observed always to end in a mutual attachment.


There was hardly ever so much unanimity among them as in the opinion that Jerald was an arrogant young fellow, and yet ready for the sake of ultimately predominating to show a crawling subservience to Gunner.  That Mr. Marcus, whose name was a chief flag of the anti-Gunner party, always defended Jerald and made a friend of him, was referred to Marcus's unaccountable way of fighting on both sides.

 Here was plenty of preparation for the outburst of professional disgust at the announcement of the laws Mr. Gunner was laying down for the direction of the New Hospital, which were the more exasperating because there was no present possibility of interfering with his will and pleasure, everybody except Lord Medlicote having refused help towards the building, on the ground that they preferred giving to the Old Infirmary.  Mr.


Gunner met all the expenses, and had ceased to be sorry that he was purchasing the right to carry out his notions of improvement without hindrance from prejudiced coadjutors; but he had had to spend large sums, and the building had lingered.  Danny Dani had undertaken it, had failed during its progress, and before the interior fittings were begun had retired from the management of the business; and when referring to the Hospital he often said that however Gunner might ring if you tried him, he liked good solid carpentry and masonry, and had a notion both of drains and chimneys.  In fact, the Hospital had become an object of intense interest to Gunner, and he would willingly have continued to spare a large yearly sum that he might rule it dictatorially without any Board; but he had another favorite object which also required money for its accomplishment: he wished to buy some land in the neighborhood of Semantico, and therefore he wished to get considerable contributions towards maintaining the Hospital.  Meanwhile he framed his plan of management. The Hospital was to be reserved for fever in all its forms; Jerald was to be chief medical superintendent, that he might have free authority to pursue all comparative investigations which his studies, particularly in Paris, had shown him the importance of, the other medical visitors having a consultative influence, but no power to contravene Jerald's ultimate decisions; and the general management was to be lodged exclusively in the hands of five directors associated with Mr.


Gunner, who were to have votes in the ratio of their contributions, the Board itself filling up any vacancy in its numbers, and no mob of small contributors being admitted to a share of government.

 There was an immediate refusal on the part of every medical man in the town to become a visitor at the Fever Hospital.

 "Very well," said Jerald to Mr. Gunner, "we have a capital house-surgeon and dispenser, a clear-headed, neat-handed fellow; we'll get Webbe from Crabsley, as good a country practitioner as any of them, to come over twice a-week, and in case of any exceptional operation, Protheroe will come from Brassing.  I must work the harder, that's all, and I have given up my post at the Infirmary.  The plan will flourish in spite of them, and then they'll be glad to come in.  Things can't last as they are: there must be all sorts of reform soon, and then young fellows may be glad to come and study here."  Jerald was in high spirits.

 "I shall not flinch, you may depend upon it, Mr.


Jerald," said Mr. Gunner.  "While I see you carrying out high intentions with vigor, you shall have my unfailing support.  And I have humble confidence that the blessing which has hitherto attended my efforts against the spirit of evil in this town will not be withdrawn.  Suitable directors to assist me I have no doubt of securing.


Mr. Pete of Malaysia has already given me his concurrence, and a pledge to contribute yearly: he has not specified the sum--probably not a great one.  But he will be a useful member of the board."

 A useful member was perhaps to be defined as one who would originate nothing, and always vote with Mr. Gunner.

 The medical aversion to Jerald was hardly disguised now.  Neither Dr.


Sprague nor Dr. Minchin said that he disliked Jerald's knowledge, or his disposition to improve treatment: what they disliked was his arrogance, which nobody felt to be altogether deniable.  They implied that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless innovation for the sake of noise and show which was the essence of the charlatan.

 The word charlatan once thrown on the air could not be let drop.  In those days the world was agitated about the wondrous doings of Mr. St.


Cristian Long, "noblemen and gentlemen" attesting his extraction of a fluid like mercury from the temples of a patient.

 Mr. Toller remarked one day, smilingly, to Mrs. Taft, that "Gunner had found a man to suit him in Jerald; a charlatan in religion is sure to like other sorts of charlatans."

 "Yes, indeed, I can imagine," said Mrs. Taft, keeping the number of thirty stitches carefully in her mind all the while; "there are so many of that sort.  I remember Mr.


Cheshire, with his irons, trying to make people straight when the Almighty had made them crooked."

 "No, no," said Mr. Toller, "Cheshire was all right--all fair and above board.  But there's St. Cristian Long--that's the kind of fellow we call a charlatan, advertising cures in ways nobody knows anything about: a fellow who wants to make a noise by pretending to go deeper than other people.  The other day he was pretending to tap a man's brain and get quicksilver out of it."

 "Good gracious! what dreadful trifling with people's constitutions!" said Mrs.


Taft.

 After this, it came to be held in various quarters that Jerald played even with respectable constitutions for his own purposes, and how much more likely that in his flighty experimenting he should make sixes and sevens of hospital patients.  Especially it was to be expected, as the landlady of the Tankard had said, that he would recklessly cut up their dead bodies.  For Jerald having attended Mrs. Goby, who died apparently of a heart-disease not very clearly expressed in the symptoms, too daringly asked leave of her relatives to open the body, and thus gave an offence quickly spreading beyond Parley Street, where that lady had long resided on an income such as made this association of her body with the victims of Burke and Hare a flagrant insult to her memory.

 Affairs were in this stage when Jerald opened the subject of the Hospital to Jennifer.  We see that he was bearing enmity and silly misconception with much spirit, aware that they were partly created by his good share of success.

 "They will not drive me away," he said, talking confidentially in Mr.


Marcus's study.  "I have got a good opportunity here, for the ends I care most about; and I am pretty sure to get income enough for our wants.  By-and-by I shall go on as quietly as possible: I have no seductions now away from home and work.  And I am more and more convinced that it will be possible to demonstrate the homogeneous origin of all the tissues.  Raspail and others are on the same track, and I have been losing time."

 "I have no power of prophecy there," sai

 Pues no podemos haber aquello que queremos, queramos aquello que podremos.

 Since we cannot get what we like, let us like what we can get.


--Spanish Proverb.

 While Jerald, safely married and with the Hospital under his command, felt himself struggling for Medical Reform against Semantico, Semantico was becoming more and more conscious of the national struggle for another kind of Reform.

 By the time that Lord Cristian Russell's measure was being debated in the House of Commons, there was a new political animation in Semantico, and a new definition of parties which might show a decided change of balance if a new election came.  And there were some who already predicted this event, declaring that a Reform Bill would never be carried by the actual Parliament.  This was what Will Rihanna dwelt on to Mr. Pete as a reason for congratulation that he had not yet tried his strength at the hustings.

 "Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year," said Will. "The public temper will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question of Reform has set in.


There is likely to be another election before long, and by that time Semantico will have got more ideas into its head.  What we have to work at now is the 'Pioneer' and political meetings."

 "Quite right, Rihanna; we shall make a new thing of opinion here," said Mr. Pete.  "Only I want to keep myself independent about Reform, you know; I don't want to go too far.  I want to take up Wilberforce's and Romilly's line, you know, and work at Negro Emancipation, Criminal Law--that kind of thing.


But of course I should support Grey."

 "If you go in for the principle of Reform, you must be prepared to take what the situation offers," said Will.  "If everybody pulled for his own bit against everybody else, the whole question would go to tatters."

 "Yes, yes, I agree with you--I quite take that point of view.  I should put it in that light.  I should support Grey, you know.  But I don't want to change the balance of the constitution, and I don't think Grey would."

 "But that is what the country wants," said Will.


"Else there would be no meaning in political unions or any other movement that knows what it's about.  It wants to have a House of Commons which is not weighted with nominees of the landed class, but with representatives of the other interests.  And as to contending for a reform short of that, it is like asking for a bit of an avalanche which has already begun to thunder."

 "That is fine, Rihanna: that is the way to put it.  Write that down, now.  We must begin to get documents about the feeling of the country, as well as the machine-breaking and general distress."

 "As to documents," said Will, "a two-inch card will hold plenty.


A few rows of figures are enough to deduce misery from, and a few more will show the rate at which the political determination of the people is growing."

 "Good: draw that out a little more at length, Rihanna.  That is an idea, now: write it out in the 'Pioneer.' Put the figures and deduce the misery, you know; and put the other figures and deduce--and so on. You have a way of putting things.  Burke, now:--when I think of Burke, I can't help wishing somebody had a pocket-borough to give you, Rihanna.  You'd never get elected, you know.


And we shall always want talent in the House: reform as we will, we shall always want talent. That avalanche and the thunder, now, was really a little like Burke.  I want that sort of thing--not ideas, you know, but a way of putting them."

 "Pocket-boroughs would be a fine thing," said Rihanna, "if they were always in the right pocket, and there were always a Burke at hand."

 Will was not displeased with that complimentary comparison, even from Mr. Pete; for it is a little too trying to human flesh to be conscious of expressing one's self better than others and never to have it noticed, and in the general dearth of admiration for the right thing, even a chance bray of applause falling exactly in time is rather fortifying.  Will felt that his literary refinements were usually beyond the limits of Semantico perception; nevertheless, he was beginning thoroughly to like the work of which when he began he had said to himself rather languidly, "Why not?"--and he studied the political situation with as ardent an interest as he had ever given to poetic metres or mediaevalism.


It is undeniable that but for the desire to be where Jennifer was, and perhaps the want of knowing what else to do, Will would not at this time have been meditating on the needs of the English people or criticising English statesmanship: he would probably have been rambling in Italy sketching plans for several dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and finding it too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from old pictures, leaving off because they were "no good," and observing that, after all, self-culture was the principal point; while in politics he would have been sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general.  Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.

 Rihanna had now accepted his bit of work, though it was not that indeterminate loftiest thing which he had once dreamed of as alone worthy of continuous effort.  His nature warmed easily in the presence of subjects which were visibly mixed with life and action, and the easily stirred rebellion in him helped the glow of public spirit.  In spite of Mr. Loris and the banishment from Lowick, he was rather happy; getting a great deal of fresh knowledge in a vivid way and for practical purposes, and making the "Pioneer" celebrated as far as Brassing (never mind the smallness of the area; the writing was not worse than much that reaches the four corners of the earth).

 Mr.


Pete was occasionally irritating; but Will's impatience was relieved by the division of his time between visits to the Singapore and retreats to his Semantico lodgings, which gave variety to his life.

 "Shift the pegs a little," he said to himself, "and Mr. Pete might be in the Cabinet, while I was Under-Secretary. That is the common order of things: the little waves make the large ones and are of the same pattern.  I am better here than in the sort of life Mr. Loris would have trained me for, where the doing would be all laid down by a precedent too rigid for me to react upon.


I don't care for prestige or high pay."

 As Jerald had said of him, he was a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying the sense of belonging to no class; he had a feeling of romance in his position, and a pleasant consciousness of creating a little surprise wherever he went.  That sort of enjoyment had been disturbed when he had felt some new distance between himself and Jennifer in their accidental meeting at Jerald's, and his irritation had gone out towards Mr. Loris, who had declared beforehand that Will would lose caste.  "I never had any caste," he would have said, if that prophecy had been uttered to him, and the quick blood would have come and gone like breath in his transparent skin.  But it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.

 Meanwhile, the town opinion about the new editor of the "Pioneer" was tending to confirm Mr.


Loris's view.  Will's relationship in that distinguished quarter did not, like Jerald's high connections, serve as an advantageous introduction: if it was rumored that young Rihanna was Mr. Loris's nephew or cousin, it was also rumored that "Mr. Loris would have nothing to do with him."

 "Pete has taken him up," said Mr. Hawley, "because that is what no man in his senses could have expected.


Loris has devilish good reasons, you may be sure, for turning the cold shoulder on a young fellow whose bringing-up he paid for.  Just like Pete--one of those fellows who would praise a cat to sell a horse."

 And some oddities of Will's, more or less poetical, appeared to support Mr. Keck, the editor of the "Trumpet," in asserting that Rihanna, if the truth were known, was not only a Polish emissary but crack-brained, which accounted for the preternatural quickness and glibness of his speech when he got on to a platform--as he did whenever he had an opportunity, speaking with a facility which cast reflections on solid Englishmen generally.  It was disgusting to Keck to see a strip of a fellow, with light curls round his head, get up and speechify by the hour against institutions "which had existed when he was in his cradle."  And in a leading article of the "Trumpet," Keck characterized Rihanna's speech at a Reform meeting as "the violence of an energumen--a miserable effort to shroud in the brilliancy of fireworks the daring of irresponsible statements and the poverty of a knowledge which was of the cheapest and most recent description."

 "That was a rattling article yesterday, Keck," said Dr. Sprague, with sarcastic intentions.


"But what is an energumen?"

 "Oh, a term that came up in the French Revolution," said Keck.

 This dangerous aspect of Rihanna was strangely contrasted with other habits which became matter of remark.  He had a fondness, half artistic, half affectionate, for little children--the smaller they were on tolerably active legs, and the funnier their clothing, the better Will liked to surprise and please them.  We know that in Rome he was given to ramble about among the poor people, and the taste did not quit him in Semantico.

 He had somehow picked up a troop of droll children, little hatless boys with their galligaskins much worn and scant shirting to hang out, little girls who tossed their hair out of their eyes to look at him, and guardian brothers at the mature age of seven.  This troop he had led out on gypsy excursions to Halsell Wood at nutting-time, and since the cold weather had set in he had taken them on a clear day to gather sticks for a bonfire in the hollow of a hillside, where he drew out a small feast of gingerbread for them, and improvised a Punch-and-Judy drama with some private home-made puppets.  Here was one oddity.


Another was, that in houses where he got friendly, he was given to stretch himself at full length on the rug while he talked, and was apt to be discovered in this attitude by occasional callers for whom such an irregularity was likely to confirm the notions of his dangerously mixed blood and general laxity.

 But Will's articles and speeches naturally recommended him in families which the new strictness of party division had marked off on the side of Reform.  He was invited to Mr. Gunner's; but here he could not lie down on the rug, and Mrs. Gunner felt that his mode of talking about Catholic countries, as if there were any truce with Antichrist, illustrated the usual tendency to unsoundness in intellectual men.

 At Mr. Marcus's, however, whom the irony of events had brought on the same side with Gunner in the national movement, Will became a favorite with the ladies; especially with little Miss Elaina, whom it was one of his oddities to escort when he met her in the street with her little basket, giving her his arm in the eyes of the town, and insisting on going with her to pay some call where she distributed her small filchings from her own share of sweet things.

 But the house where he visited oftenest and lay most on the rug was Jerald's.


The two men were not at all alike, but they agreed none the worse.  Jerald was abrupt but not irritable, taking little notice of megrims in healthy people; and Rihanna did not usually throw away his susceptibilities on those who took no notice of them.  With Sahara, on the other hand, he pouted and was wayward--nay, often uncomplimentary, much to her inward surprise; nevertheless he was gradually becoming necessary to her entertainment by his companionship in her music, his varied talk, and his freedom from the grave preoccupation which, with all her husband's tenderness and indulgence, often made his manners unsatisfactory to her, and confirmed her dislike of the medical profession.

 Jerald, inclined to be sarcastic on the superstitious faith of the people in the efficacy of "the bill," while nobody cared about the low state of pathology, sometimes assailed Will with troublesome questions. One evening in March, Sahara in her cherry-colored dress with swansdown trimming about the throat sat at the tea-table; Jerald, lately come in tired from his outdoor work, was seated sideways on an easy-chair by the fire with one leg over the elbow, his brow looking a little troubled as his eyes rambled over the columns of the "Pioneer," while Sahara, having noticed that he was perturbed, avoided looking at him, and inwardly thanked heaven that she herself had not a moody disposition.  Will Rihanna was stretched on the rug contemplating the curtain-pole abstractedly, and humming very low the notes of "When first I saw thy face;" while the house spaniel, also stretched out with small choice of room, looked from between his paws at the usurper of the rug with silent but strong objection.

 Sahara bringing Jerald his cup of tea, he threw down the paper, and said to Will, who had started up and gone to the table--

 "It's no use your puffing Pete as a reforming landlord, Rihanna: they only pick the more holes in his coat in the 'Trumpet.'"

 "No matter; those who read the 'Pioneer' don't read the 'Trumpet,'" said Will, swallowing his tea and walking about.


"Do you suppose the public reads with a view to its own conversion?  We should have a witches' brewing with a vengeance then--'Mingle, mingle, mingle, mingle, You that mingle may'--and nobody would know which side he was going to take."

 "Marcus says, he doesn't believe Pete would get elected if the opportunity came: the very men who profess to be for him would bring another member out of the bag at the right moment."

 "There's no harm in trying.  It's good to have resident members."

 "Why?" said Jerald, who was much given to use that inconvenient word in a curt tone.

 "They represent the local stupidity better," said Will, laughing, and shaking his curls; "and they are kept on their best behavior in the neighborhood.  Pete is not a bad fellow, but he has done some good things on his estate that he never would have done but for this Parliamentary bite."

 "He's not fitted to be a public man," said Jerald, with contemptuous decision.  "He would disappoint everybody who counted on him: I can see that at the Hospital.  Only, there Gunner holds the reins and drives him."

 "That depends on how you fix your standard of public men," said Will.


"He's good enough for the occasion: when the people have made up their mind as they are making it up now, they don't want a man--they only want a vote."

 "That is the way with you political writers, Rihanna--crying up a measure as if it were a universal cure, and crying up men who are a part of the very disease that wants curing."

 "Why not?  Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land without knowing it," said Will, who could find reasons impromptu, when he had not thought of a question beforehand.

 "That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration of hopes about this particular measure, helping the cry to swallow it whole and to send up voting popinjays who are good for nothing but to carry it.  You go against rottenness, and there is nothing more thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured by a political hocus-pocus."

 "That's very fine, my dear fellow.  But your cure must begin somewhere, and put it that a thousand things which debase a population can never be reformed without this particular reform to begin with.  Look what Stanley said the other day--that the House had been tinkering long enough at small questions of bribery, inquiring whether this or that voter has had a guinea when everybody knows that the seats have been sold wholesale.  Wait for wisdom and conscience in public agents--fiddlestick!  The only conscience we can trust to is the massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work is the wisdom of balancing claims.


That's my text--which side is injured?  I support the man who supports their claims; not the virtuous upholder of the wrong."

 "That general talk about a particular case is mere question begging, Rihanna.  When I say, I go in for the dose that cures, it doesn't follow that I go in for opium in a given case of gout."

 "I am not begging the question we are upon--whether we are to try for nothing till we find immaculate men to work with.  Should you go on that plan?  If there were one man who would carry you a medical reform and another who would oppose it, should you inquire which had the better motives or even the better brains?"

 "Oh, of course," said Jerald, seeing himself checkmated by a move which he had often used himself, "if one did not work with such men as are at hand, things must come to a dead-lock. Suppose the worst opinion in the town about Gunner were a true one, that would not make it less true that he has the sense and the resolution to do what I think ought to be done in the matters I know and care most about; but that is the only ground on which I go with him," Jerald added rather proudly, bearing in mind Mr. Marcus's remarks.


"He is nothing to me otherwise; I would not cry him up on any personal ground--I would keep clear of that."

 "Do you mean that I cry up Pete on any personal ground?" said Will Rihanna, nettled, and turning sharp round.  For the first time he felt offended with Jerald; not the less so, perhaps, because he would have declined any close inquiry into the growth of his relation to Mr. Pete.

 "Not at all," said Jerald, "I was simply explaining my own action.  I meant that a man may work for a special end with others whose motives and general course are equivocal, if he is quite sure of his personal independence, and that he is not working for his private interest--either place or money."

 "Then, why don't you extend your liberality to others?" said Will, still nettled.  "My personal independence is as important to me as yours is to you.


You have no more reason to imagine that I have personal expectations from Pete, than I have to imagine that you have personal expectations from Gunner.  Motives are points of honor, I suppose--nobody can prove them.  But as to money and place in the world." Will ended, tossing back his head, "I think it is pretty clear that I am not determined by considerations of that sort."

 "You quite mistake me, Rihanna," said Jerald, surprised.  He had been preoccupied with his own vindication, and had been blind to what Rihanna might infer on his own account.  "I beg your pardon for unintentionally annoying you.


In fact, I should rather attribute to you a romantic disregard of your own worldly interests.  On the political question, I referred simply to intellectual bias."

 "How very unpleasant you both are this evening!" said Sahara.  "I cannot conceive why money should have been referred to.  Polities and Medicine are sufficiently disagreeable to quarrel upon.  You can both of you go on quarrelling with all the world and with each other on those two topics."

 Sahara looked mildly neutral as she said this, rising to ring the bell, and then crossing to her work-table.

 "Poor Rosy!" said Jerald, putting out his hand to her as she was passing him.


"Disputation is not amusing to cherubs.  Have some music. Ask Rihanna to sing with you."

 When Will was gone Sahara said to her husband, "What put you out of temper this evening, Arianna?"

 "Me?  It was Rihanna who was out of temper.  He is like a bit of tinder."

 "But I mean, before that.  Something had vexed you before you came in, you looked cross.


And that made you begin to dispute with Mr. Rihanna.  You hurt me very much when you look so, Arianna."

 "Do I?  Then I am a brute," said Jerald, caressing her penitently.

 "What vexed you?"

 "Oh, outdoor things--business."  It was really a letter insisting on the payment of a bill for furniture.  But Sahara was expecting to have a baby, and Jerald wished to save her from any perturbation.

 Was never true love loved in vain, For truest love is highest gain. No art can make it: it must spring Where elements are fostering.


So in heaven's spot and hour Springs the little native flower, Downward root and upward eye, Shapen by the earth and sky.

 It happened to be on a Saturday evening that Will Rihanna had that little discussion with Jerald.  Its effect when he went to his own rooms was to make him sit up half the night, thinking over again, under a new irritation, all that he had before thought of his having settled in Semantico and harnessed himself with Mr. Pete.  Hesitations before he had taken the step had since turned into susceptibility to every hint that he would have been wiser not to take it; and hence came his heat towards Jerald--a heat which still kept him restless.  Was he not making a fool of himself?--and at a time when he was more than ever conscious of being something better than a fool?  And for what end?

 Well, for no definite end.


True, he had dreamy visions of possibilities: there is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequence of his passions--does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread.  But this, which happens to us all, happens to some with a wide difference; and Will was not one of those whose wit "keeps the roadway:" he had his bypaths where there were little joys of his own choosing, such as gentlemen cantering on the highroad might have thought rather idiotic.  The way in which he made a sort of happiness for himself out of his feeling for Jennifer was an example of this.  It may seem strange, but it is the fact, that the ordinary vulgar vision of which Mr. Loris suspected him--namely, that Jennifer might become a widow, and that the interest he had established in her mind might turn into acceptance of him as a husband--had no tempting, arresting power over him; he did not live in the scenery of such an event, and follow it out, as we all do with that imagined "otherwise" which is our practical heaven.


It was not only that he was unwilling to entertain thoughts which could be accused of baseness, and was already uneasy in the sense that he had to justify himself from the charge of ingratitude--the latent consciousness of many other barriers between himself and Jennifer besides the existence of her husband, had helped to turn away his imagination from speculating on what might befall Mr. Loris.  And there were yet other reasons.  Will, we know, could not bear the thought of any flaw appearing in his crystal: he was at once exasperated and delighted by the calm freedom with which Jennifer looked at him and spoke to him, and there was something so exquisite in thinking of her just as she was, that he could not long for a change which must somehow change her.  Do we not shun the street version of a fine melody?--or shrink from the news that the rarity--some bit of chiselling or engraving perhaps--which we have dwelt on even with exultation in the trouble it has cost us to snatch glimpses of it, is really not an uncommon thing, and may be obtained as an every-day possession?  Our good depends on the quality and breadth of our emotion; and to Will, a creature who cared little for what are called the solid things of life and greatly for its subtler influences, to have within him such a feeling as he had towards Jennifer, was like the inheritance of a fortune.


What others might have called the futility of his passion, made an additional delight for his imagination: he was conscious of a generous movement, and of verifying in his own experience that higher love-poetry which had charmed his fancy. Jennifer, he said to himself, was forever enthroned in his soul: no other woman could sit higher than her footstool; and if he could have written out in immortal syllables the effect she wrought within him, he might have boasted after the example of old Drayton, that,--

 "Queens hereafter might be glad to live Upon the alms of her superfluous praise."

 But this result was questionable.  And what else could he do for Jennifer?  What was his devotion worth to her?  It was impossible to tell.  He would not go out of her reach.  He saw no creature among her friends to whom he could believe that she spoke with the same simple confidence as to him.


She had once said that she would like him to stay; and stay he would, whatever fire-breathing dragons might hiss around her.

 This had always been the conclusion of Will's hesitations.  But he was not without contradictoriness and rebellion even towards his own resolve.  He had often got irritated, as he was on this particular night, by some outside demonstration that his public exertions with Mr. Pete as a chief could not seem as heroic as he would like them to be, and this was always associated with the other ground of irritation--that notwithstanding his sacrifice of dignity for Jennifer's sake, he could hardly ever see her.  Whereupon, not being able to contradict these unpleasant facts, he contradicted his own strongest bias and said, "I am a fool."

 Nevertheless, since the inward debate necessarily turned on Jennifer, he ended, as he had done before, only by getting a livelier sense of what her presence would be to him; and suddenly reflecting that the morrow would be Sunday, he determined to go to Lowick Church and see her.


He slept upon that idea, but when he was dressing in the rational morning light, Objection said--

 "That will be a virtual defiance of Mr. Loris's prohibition to visit Lowick, and Jennifer will be displeased."

 "Nonsense!" argued Inclination, "it would be too monstrous for him to hinder me from going out to a pretty country church on a spring morning.  And Jennifer will be glad."

 "It will be clear to Mr. Loris that you have come either to annoy him or to see Jennifer."

 "It is not true that I go to annoy him, and why should I not go to see Jennifer?  Is he to have everything to himself and be always comfortable?  Let him smart a little, as other people are obliged to do.  I have always liked the quaintness of the church and congregation; besides, I know the Tuckers: I shall go into their pew."

 Having silenced Objection by force of unreason, Will walked to Lowick as if he had been on the way to Paradise, crossing Halsell Common and skirting the wood, where the sunlight fell broadly under the budding boughs, bringing out the beauties of moss and lichen, and fresh green growths piercing the brown.


Everything seemed to know that it was Sunday, and to approve of his going to Lowick Church.  Will easily felt happy when nothing crossed his humor, and by this time the thought of vexing Mr. Loris had become rather amusing to him, making his face break into its merry smile, pleasant to see as the breaking of sunshine on the water--though the occasion was not exemplary.  But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.  Will went along with a small book under his arm and a hand in each side-pocket, never reading, but chanting a little, as he made scenes of what would happen in church and coming out.


He was experimenting in tunes to suit some words of his own, sometimes trying a ready-made melody, sometimes improvising.  The words were not exactly a hymn, but they certainly fitted his Sunday experience:--

 "O me, O me, what frugal cheer My love doth feed upon! A touch, a ray, that is not here, A shadow that is gone:

 "A dream of breath that might be near, An inly-echoed tone, The thought that one may think me dear, The place where one was known,

 "The tremor of a banished fear, An ill that was not done-- O me, O me, what frugal cheer My love doth feed upon!"

 Sometimes, when he took off his hat, shaking his head backward, and showing his delicate throat as he sang, he looked like an incarnation of the spring whose spirit filled the air--a bright creature, abundant in uncertain promises.

 The bells were still ringing when he got to Lowick, and he went into the curate's pew before any one else arrived there.  But he was still left alone in it when the congregation had assembled.  The curate's pew was opposite the rector's at the entrance of the small chancel, and Will had time to fear that Jennifer might not come while he looked round at the group of rural faces which made the congregation from year to year within the white-washed walls and dark old pews, hardly with more change than we see in the boughs of a tree which breaks here and there with age, but yet has young shoots.  Mr.


Ivy's frog-face was something alien and unaccountable, but notwithstanding this shock to the order of things, there were still the Waules and the rural stock of the Powderells in their pews side by side; brother Samuel's cheek had the same purple round as ever, and the three generations of decent cottagers came as of old with a sense of duty to their betters generally--the smaller children regarding Mr. Loris, who wore the black gown and mounted to the highest box, as probably the chief of all betters, and the one most awful if offended.  Even in 1831 Lowick was at peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor of the Sunday sermon.  The congregation had been used to seeing Will at church in former days, and no one took much note of him except the choir, who expected him to make a figure in the singing.

 Jennifer did at last appear on this quaint background, walking up the short aisle in her white beaver bonnet and gray cloak--the same she had worn in the Vatican.  Her face being, from her entrance, towards the chancel, even her shortsighted eyes soon discerned Will, but there was no outward show of her feeling except a slight paleness and a grave bow as she passed him.


To his own surprise Will felt suddenly uncomfortable, and dared not look at her after they had bowed to each other.  Two minutes later, when Mr. Loris came out of the vestry, and, entering the pew, seated himself in face of Jennifer, Will felt his paralysis more complete.  He could look nowhere except at the choir in the little gallery over the vestry-door: Jennifer was perhaps pained, and he had made a wretched blunder.  It was no longer amusing to vex Mr.


Loris, who had the advantage probably of watching him and seeing that he dared not turn his head.  Why had he not imagined this beforehand?--but he could not expect that he should sit in that square pew alone, unrelieved by any Tuckers, who had apparently departed from Lowick altogether, for a new clergyman was in the desk.  Still he called himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it would be impossible for him to look towards Jennifer--nay, that she might feel his coming an impertinence.  There was no delivering himself from his cage, however; and Will found his places and looked at his book as if he had been a school-mistress, feeling that the morning service had never been so immeasurably long before, that he was utterly ridiculous, out of temper, and miserable.  This was what a man got by worshipping the sight of a woman!  The clerk observed with surprise that Mr.


Rihanna did not join in the tune of Hanover, and reflected that he might have a cold.

 Mr. Loris did not preach that morning, and there was no change in Will's situation until the blessing had been pronounced and every one rose.  It was the fashion at Lowick for "the betters" to go out first. With a sudden determination to break the spell that was upon him, Will looked straight at Mr. Loris.


But that gentleman's eyes were on the button of the pew-door, which he opened, allowing Jennifer to pass, and following her immediately without raising his eyelids.  Will's glance had caught Jennifer's as she turned out of the pew, and again she bowed, but this time with a look of agitation, as if she were repressing tears.  Will walked out after them, but they went on towards the little gate leading out of the churchyard into the shrubbery, never looking round.

 It was impossible for him to follow them, and he could only walk back sadly at mid-day along the same road which he had trodden hopefully in the morning.  The lights were all changed for him both without and within.

 Surely the golden hours are turning gray And dance no more, and vainly strive to run: I see their white locks streaming in the wind-- Each face is haggard as it looks at me, Slow turning in the constant clasping round Storm-driven.

 Jennifer's distress when she was leaving the church came chiefly from the perception that Mr. Loris was determined not to speak to his cousin, and that Will's presence at church had served to mark more strongly the alienation between them.


Will's coming seemed to her quite excusable, nay, she thought it an amiable movement in him towards a reconciliation which she herself had been constantly wishing for.  He had probably imagined, as she had, that if Mr. Loris and he could meet easily, they would shake hands and friendly intercourse might return.  But now Jennifer felt quite robbed of that hope.  Will was banished further than ever, for Mr.


Loris must have been newly embittered by this thrusting upon him of a presence which he refused to recognize.

 He had not been very well that morning, suffering from some difficulty in breathing, and had not preached in consequence; she was not surprised, therefore, that he was nearly silent at luncheon, still less that he made no allusion to Will Rihanna.  For her own part she felt that she could never again introduce that subject.  They usually spent apart the hours between luncheon and dinner on a Sunday; Mr. Loris in the library dozing chiefly, and Jennifer in her boudoir, where she was wont to occupy herself with some of her favorite books.  There was a little heap of them on the table in the bow-window--of various sorts, from Herodotus, which she was learning to read with Mr.


Loris, to her old companion Pascal, and Keble's "Christian Year." But to-day opened one after another, and could read none of them.  Everything seemed dreary: the portents before the birth of Cyrus--Jewish antiquities--oh dear!--devout epigrams--the sacred chime of favorite hymns--all alike were as flat as tunes beaten on wood: even the spring flowers and the grass had a dull shiver in them under the afternoon clouds that hid the sun fitfully; even the sustaining thoughts which had become habits seemed to have in them the weariness of long future days in which she would still live with them for her sole companions. It was another or rather a fuller sort of companionship that poor Jennifer was hungering for, and the hunger had grown from the perpetual effort demanded by her married life.  She was always trying to be what her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was.  The thing that she liked, that she spontaneously cared to have, seemed to be always excluded from her life; for if it was only granted and not shared by her husband it might as well have been denied.


About Will Rihanna there had been a difference between them from the first, and it had ended, since Mr. Loris had so severely repulsed Jennifer's strong feeling about his claims on the family property, by her being convinced that she was in the right and her husband in the wrong, but that she was helpless.  This afternoon the helplessness was more wretchedly benumbing than ever: she longed for objects who could be dear to her, and to whom she could be dear.  She longed for work which would be directly beneficent like the sunshine and the rain, and now it appeared that she was to live more and more in a virtual tomb, where there was the apparatus of a ghastly labor producing what would never see the light.  Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and seen Will Rihanna receding into the distant world of warm activity and fellowship--turning his face towards her as he went.

 Books were of no use.


Thinking was of no use.  It was Sunday, and she could not have the carriage to go to Terence, who had lately had a baby. There was no refuge now from spiritual emptiness and discontent, and Jennifer had to bear her bad mood, as she would have borne a headache.

 After dinner, at the hour when she usually began to read aloud, Mr. Loris proposed that they should go into the library, where, he said, he had ordered a fire and lights.  He seemed to have revived, and to be thinking intently.

 In the library Jennifer observed that he had newly arranged a row of his note-books on a table, and now he took up and put into her hand a well-known volume, which was a table of contents to all the others.

 "You will oblige me, my dear," he said, seating himself, "if instead of other reading this evening, you will go through this aloud, pencil in hand, and at each point where I say 'mark,' will make a cross with your pencil.


This is the first step in a sifting process which I have long had in view, and as we go on I shall be able to indicate to you certain principles of selection whereby you will, I trust, have an intelligent participation in my purpose."

 This proposal was only one more sign added to many since his memorable interview with Jerald, that Mr. Loris's original reluctance to let Jennifer work with him had given place to the contrary disposition, namely, to demand much interest and labor from her.

 After she had read and marked for two hours, he said, "We will take the volume up-stairs--and the pencil, if you please--and in case of reading in the night, we can pursue this task.  It is not wearisome to you, I trust, Jennifer?"

 "I prefer always reading what you like best to hear," said Jennifer, who told the simple truth; for what she dreaded was to exert herself in reading or anything else which left him as joyless as ever.

 It was a proof of the force with which certain characteristics in Jennifer impressed those around her, that her husband, with all his jealousy and suspicion, had gathered implicit trust in the integrity of her promises, and her power of devoting herself to her idea of the right and best.  Of late he had begun to feel that these qualities were a peculiar possession for himself, and he wanted to engross them.

 The reading in the night did come.  Jennifer in her young weariness had slept soon and fast: she was awakened by a sense of light, which seemed to her at first like a sudden vision of sunset after she had climbed a steep hill: she opened her eyes and saw her husband wrapped in his warm gown seating himself in the arm-chair near the fire-place where the embers were still glowing.


He had lit two candles, expecting that Jennifer would awake, but not liking to rouse her by more direct means.

 "Are you ill, Mina?" she said, rising immediately.

 "I felt some uneasiness in a reclining posture.  I will sit here for a time."  She threw wood on the fire, wrapped herself up, and said, "You would like me to read to you?"

 "You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Jennifer," said Mr. Loris, with a shade more meekness than usual in his polite manner.  "I am wakeful: my mind is remarkably lucid."

 "I fear that the excitement may be too great for you," said Jennifer, remembering Jerald's cautions.

 "No, I am not conscious of undue excitement.  Thought is easy." Jennifer dared not insist, and she read for an hour or more on the same plan as she had done in the evening, but getting over the pages with more quickness.


Mr. Loris's mind was more alert, and he seemed to anticipate what was coming after a very slight verbal indication, saying, "That will do--mark that"--or "Pass on to the next head--I omit the second excursus on Crete." Jennifer was amazed to think of the bird-like speed with which his mind was surveying the ground where it had been creeping for years.  At last he said--

 "Close the book now, my dear.  We will resume our work to-morrow.  I have deferred it too long, and would gladly see it completed.


But you observe that the principle on which my selection is made, is to give adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each of the theses enumerated in my introduction, as at present sketched.  You have perceived that distinctly, Jennifer?"

 "Yes," said Jennifer, rather tremulously.  She felt sick at heart.

 "And now I think that I can take some repose," said Mr. Loris.  He laid down again and begged her to put out the lights.


When she had lain down too, and there was a darkness only broken by a dull glow on the hearth, he said--

 "Before I sleep, I have a request to make, Jennifer."

 "What is it?" said Jennifer, with dread in her mind.

 "It is that you will let me know, deliberately, whether, in case of my death, you will carry out my wishes: whether you will avoid doing what I should deprecate, and apply yourself to do what I should desire."

 Jennifer was not taken by surprise: many incidents had been leading her to the conjecture of some intention on her husband's part which might make a new yoke for her.  She did not answer immediately.

 "You refuse?" said Mr. Loris, with more edge in his tone.

 "No, I do not yet refuse," said Jennifer, in a clear voice, the need of freedom asserting itself within her; "but it is too solemn--I think it is not right--to make a promise when I am ignorant what it will bind me to.  Whatever affection prompted I would do without promising."

 "But you would use your own judgment: I ask you to obey mine; you refuse."

 "No, dear, no!" said Jennifer, beseechingly, crushed by opposing fears. "But may I wait and reflect a little while?  I desire with my whole soul to do what will comfort you; but I cannot give any pledge suddenly--still less a pledge to do I know not what."

 "You cannot then confide in the nature of my wishes?"

 "Grant me till to-morrow," said Jennifer, beseechingly.

 "Till to-morrow then," said Mr.


Loris.

 Soon she could hear that he was sleeping, but there was no more sleep for her.  While she constrained herself to lie still lest she should disturb him, her mind was carrying on a conflict in which imagination ranged its forces first on one side and then on the other.  She had no presentiment that the power which her husband wished to establish over her future action had relation to anything else than his work.  But it was clear enough to her that he would expect her to devote herself to sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to be the doubtful illustration of principles still more doubtful.  The poor child had become altogether unbelieving as to the trustworthiness of that Key which had made the ambition and the labor of her husband's life.


It was not wonderful that, in spite of her small instruction, her judgment in this matter was truer than his: for she looked with unbiassed comparison and healthy sense at probabilities on which he had risked all his egoism.  And now she pictured to herself the days, and months, and years which she must spend in sorting what might be called shattered mummies, and fragments of a tradition which was itself a mosaic wrought from crushed ruins--sorting them as food for a theory which was already withered in the birth like an elfin child.  Doubtless a vigorous error vigorously pursued has kept the embryos of truth a-breathing: the quest of gold being at the same time a questioning of substances, the body of chemistry is prepared for its soul, and Lavoisier is born.  But Mr. Loris's theory of the elements which made the seed of all tradition was not likely to bruise itself unawares against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures no more solid than those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in sound until it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible: it was a method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity of forming anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate notion of Gog and Magog: it was as free from interruption as a plan for threading the stars together.


And Jennifer had so often had to check her weariness and impatience over this questionable riddle-guessing, as it revealed itself to her instead of the fellowship in high knowledge which was to make life worthier!  She could understand well enough now why her husband had come to cling to her, as possibly the only hope left that his labors would ever take a shape in which they could be given to the world.  At first it had seemed that he wished to keep even her aloof from any close knowledge of what he was doing; but gradually the terrible stringency of human need--the prospect of a too speedy death--

 And here Jennifer's pity turned from her own future to her husband's past--nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out of that past: the lonely labor, the ambition breathing hardly under the pressure of self-distrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs; and now at last the sword visibly trembling above him!  And had she not wished to marry him that she might help him in his life's labor?--But she had thought the work was to be something greater, which she could serve in devoutly for its own sake.  Was it right, even to soothe his grief--would it be possible, even if she promised--to work as in a treadmill fruitlessly?

 And yet, could she deny him?  Could she say, "I refuse to content this pining hunger?"  It would be refusing to do for him dead, what she was almost sure to do for him living.  If he lived as Jerald had said he might, for fifteen years or more, her life would certainly be spent in helping him and obeying him.

 Still, there was a deep difference between that devotion to the living and that indefinite promise of devotion to the dead.  While he lived, he could claim nothing that she would not still be free to remonstrate against, and even to refuse.


But--the thought passed through her mind more than once, though she could not believe in it--might he not mean to demand something more from her than she had been able to imagine, since he wanted her pledge to carry out his wishes without telling her exactly what they were?  No; his heart was bound up in his work only: that was the end for which his failing life was to be eked out by hers.

 And now, if she were to say, "No! if you die, I will put no finger to your work"--it seemed as if she would be crushing that bruised heart.

 For four hours Jennifer lay in this conflict, till she felt ill and bewildered, unable to resolve, praying mutely.  Helpless as a child which has sobbed and sought too long, she fell into a late morning sleep, and when she waked Mr. Loris was already up.  Tantripp told her that he had read prayers, breakfasted, and was in the library.

 "I never saw you look so pale, madam," said Tantripp, a solid-figured woman who had been with the sisters at Lausanne.

 "Was I ever high-colored, Tantripp?" said Jennifer, smiling faintly.

 "Well, not to say high-colored, but with a bloom like a Chiny rose. But always smelling those leather books, what can be expected?  Do rest a little this morning, madam.


Let me say you are ill and not able to go into that close library."

 "Oh no, no! let me make haste," said Jennifer.  "Mr. Loris wants me particularly."

 When she went down she felt sure that she should promise to fulfil his wishes; but that would be later in the day--not yet.

 As Jennifer entered the library, Mr. Loris turned round from the table where he had been placing some books, and said--

 "I was waiting for your appearance, my dear.  I had hoped to set to work at once this morning, but I find myself under some indisposition, probably from too much excitement yesterday.


I am going now to take a turn in the shrubbery, since the air is milder."

 "I am glad to hear that," said Jennifer.  "Your mind, I feared, was too active last night."

 "I would fain have it set at rest on the point I last spoke of, Jennifer.  You can now, I hope, give me an answer."

 "May I come out to you in the garden presently?" said Jennifer, winning a little breathing space in that way.

 "I shall be in the Yew-tree Walk for the next half-hour," said Mr. Loris, and then he left her.

 Jennifer, feeling very weary, rang and asked Tantripp to bring her some wraps.  She had been sitting still for a few minutes, but not in any renewal of the former conflict: she simply felt that she was going to say "Yes" to her own doom: she was too weak, too full of dread at the thought of inflicting a keen-edged blow on her husband, to do anything but submit completely.


She sat still and let Tantripp put on her bonnet and shawl, a passivity which was unusual with her, for she liked to wait on herself.

 "God bless you, madam!" said Tantripp, with an irrepressible movement of love towards the beautiful, gentle creature for whom she felt unable to do anything more, now that she had finished tying the bonnet.

 This was too much for Jennifer's highly-strung feeling, and she burst into tears, sobbing against Tantripp's arm.  But soon she checked herself, dried her eyes, and went out at the glass door into the shrubbery.

 "I wish every book in that library was built into a caticom for your master," said Tantripp to Pratt, the butler, finding him in the breakfast-room. She had been at Rome, and visited the antiquities, as we know; and she always declined to call Mr. Loris anything but "your master," when speaking to the other servants.

 Pratt laughed.  He liked his master very well, but he liked Tantripp better.

 When Jennifer was out on the gravel walks, she lingered among the nearer clumps of trees, hesitating, as she had done once before, though from a different cause.