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Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time

by Wilkie Collins · English · Gutenberg #7892 · 748,487 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time

Author: Wilkie Collins


        
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7892]
                Most recently updated: September 13, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7892

Credits: Produced by James Rusk, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART AND SCIENCE: A STORY OF THE PRESENT TIME ***




Produced by James Rusk





HEART AND SCIENCE

A Story of the Present Time

By Wilkie Collins



TO

SARONY

(OF NEW YORK)

ARTIST; PHOTOGRAPHER,

AND

GOOD FRIEND





I. PREFACE TO READERS IN GENERAL


You are the children of Old Mother England, on both sides of the
Atlantic; you form the majority of buyers and borrowers of novels; and
you judge of works of fiction by certain inbred preferences, which but
slightly influence the other great public of readers on the continent of
Europe.

The two qualities in fiction which hold the highest rank in your
estimation are: Character and Humour. Incident and dramatic situation
only occupy the second place in your favour. A novel that tells no
story, or that blunders perpetually in trying to tell a story--a novel
so entirely devoid of all sense of the dramatic side of human life,
that not even a theatrical thief can find anything in it to steal--will
nevertheless be a work that wins (and keeps) your admiration, if it has
Humour which dwells on your memory, and characters which enlarge the
circle of your friends.

I have myself always tried to combine the different merits of a good
novel, in one and the same work; and I have never succeeded in keeping
an equal balance. In the present story you will find the scales
inclining, on the whole, in favour of character and Humour. This has not
happened accidentally.

Advancing years, and health that stands sadly in need of improvement,
warn me--if I am to vary my way of work--that I may have little time
to lose. Without waiting for future opportunities, I have kept your
standard of merit more constantly before my mind, in writing this book,
than on some former occasions.

Still persisting in telling you a story--still refusing to get up in the
pulpit and preach, or to invade the platform and lecture, or to take you
by the buttonhole in confidence and make fun of my Art--it has been
my chief effort to draw the characters with a vigour and breadth of
treatment, derived from the nearest and truest view that I could get of
the one model, Nature. Whether I shall at once succeed in adding to
the circle of your friends in the world of fiction--or whether you will
hurry through the narrative, and only discover on a later reading that
it is the characters which have interested you in the story--remains to
be seen. Either way, your sympathy will find me grateful; for, either
way, my motive has been to please you.

During its periodical publication correspondents, noting certain
passages in “Heart and Science,” inquired how I came to think of writing
this book. The question may be readily answered in better words than
mine. My book has been written in harmony with opinions which have an
indisputable claim to respect. Let them speak for themselves.


     SHAKESPEARE’S OPINION.--“It was always yet the trick of our
English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common.”
 _(King Henry IV., Part II.)_

     WALTER SCOTT’S OPINION--“I am no great believer in the extreme
degree of improvement to be derived from the advancement of Science; for
every study of that nature tends, when pushed to a certain extent, to
harden the heart.” _(Letter to Miss Edgeworth.)_

     FARADAY’S OPINION.--“The education of the judgment has for its
first and its last step--Humility.” _(Lecture on Mental Education, at
the Royal Institution.)_

Having given my reasons for writing the book, let me conclude by telling
you what I have kept out of the book.

It encourages me to think that we have many sympathies in common; and
among them, that most of us have taken to our hearts domestic pets.
Writing under this conviction, I have not forgotten my responsibility
towards you, and towards my Art, in pleading the cause of the harmless
and affectionate beings of God’s creation. From first to last, you are
purposely left in ignorance of the hideous secrets of Vivisection. The
outside of the laboratory is a necessary object in my landscape--but I
never once open the door and invite you to look in. I trace, in one of
my characters, the result of the habitual practice of cruelty (no matter
under what pretence) in fatally deteriorating the nature of man--and
I leave the picture to speak for itself. My own personal feeling has
throughout been held in check. Thankfully accepting the assistance
rendered to me by Miss Frances Power Cobbe, by Mrs. H. M. Gordon, and by
Surgeon-General Gordon, C.B., I have borne in mind (as they have borne
in mind) the value of temperate advocacy to a good cause.

With this, your servant withdraws, and leaves you to the story.




II. TO READERS IN PARTICULAR.

If you are numbered among those good friends of ours, who are especially
capable of understanding us and sympathising with us, be pleased to
accept the expression of our gratitude, and to pass over the lines that
follow.

But if you open our books with a mind soured by distrust; if you
habitually anticipate inexcusable ignorance where the course of the
story happens to turn on matters of fact; it is you, Sir or Madam, whom
I now want.

Not to dispute with you--far from it! I own with sorrow that your
severity does occasionally encounter us on assailable ground. But there
are exceptions, even to the stiffest rules. Some of us are not guilty
of wilful carelessness: some of us apply to competent authority, when
we write on subjects beyond the range of our own experience. Having thus
far ventured to speak for my colleagues, you will conclude that I am
paving the way for speaking next of myself. As our cousins in the United
States say--that is so.

In the following pages, there are allusions to medical practice at the
bedside; leading in due course to physiological questions which connect
themselves with the main interest of the novel. In traversing this
delicate ground, you have not been forgotten. Before the manuscript went
to the printer, it was submitted for correction to an eminent London
surgeon, whose experience extends over a period of forty years.

Again: a supposed discovery in connection with brain disease, which
occupies a place of importance, is not (as you may suspect) the
fantastic product of the author’s imagination. Finding his
materials everywhere, he has even contrived to make use of Professor
Ferrier--writing on the “Localisation of Cerebral Disease,” and closing
a confession of the present result of post-mortem examination of brains
in these words: “We cannot even be sure, whether many of the changes
discovered are the cause or the result of the Disease, or whether the
two are the conjoint results of a common cause.” Plenty of elbow room
here for the spirit of discovery.

On becoming acquainted with “Mrs. Gallilee,” you will find her
talking--and you will sometimes even find the author talking--of
scientific subjects in general. You will naturally conclude that it is
“all gross caricature.” No; it is all promiscuous reading. Let me spare
you a long list of books consulted, and of newspapers and magazines
mutilated for “cuttings”--and appeal to examples once more, and for the
last time.

When “Mrs. Gallilee” wonders whether “Carmina has ever heard of
the Diathermancy of Ebonite,” she is thinking of proceedings at a
conversazione in honour of Professor Helmholtz (reported in the _Times_
of April 12, 1881), at which “radiant energy” was indeed converted into
“sonorous vibrations.” Again: when she contemplates taking part in
a discussion on Matter, she has been slily looking into Chambers’s
Encyclopaedia, and has there discovered the interesting conditions on
which she can “dispense with the idea of atoms.” Briefly, not a word of
my own invention occurs, when Mrs. Gallilee turns the learned side of
her character to your worships’ view.

I have now only to add that the story has been subjected to careful
revision, and I hope to consequent improvement, in its present form of
publication. Past experience has shown me that you have a sharp eye for
slips of the pen, and that you thoroughly enjoy convicting a novelist,
by post, of having made a mistake. Whatever pains I may have taken to
disappoint you, it is quite likely that we may be again indebted to each
other on this occasion. So, to our infinite relief on either side, we
part friends after all.

W. C.

London: April 1883




CHAPTER I.

The weary old nineteenth century had advanced into the last twenty years
of its life.

Towards two o’clock in the afternoon, Ovid Vere (of the Royal College of
Surgeons) stood at the window of his consulting-room in London, looking
out at the summer sunshine, and the quiet dusty street.

He had received a warning, familiar to the busy men of our time--the
warning from overwrought Nature, which counsels rest after excessive
work. With a prosperous career before him, he had been compelled (at
only thirty-one years of age) to ask a colleague to take charge of his
practice, and to give the brain which he had cruelly wearied a rest of
some months to come. On the next day he had arranged to embark for the
Mediterranean in a friend’s yacht.

An active man, devoted heart and soul to his profession, is not a man
who can learn the happy knack of being idle at a moment’s notice. Ovid
found the mere act of looking out of window, and wondering what he
should do next, more than he had patience to endure.

He turned to his study table. If he had possessed a wife to look after
him, he would have been reminded that he and his study table had nothing
in common, under present circumstances. Being deprived of conjugal
superintendence, he broke though his own rules. His restless hand
unlocked a drawer, and took out a manuscript work on medicine of his own
writing. “Surely,” he thought, “I may finish a chapter, before I go to
sea to-morrow?”

His head, steady enough while he was only looking out of window, began
to swim before he had got to the bottom of a page. The last sentences of
the unfinished chapter alluded to a matter of fact which he had not yet
verified. In emergencies of any sort, he was a patient man and a man of
resource. The necessary verification could be accomplished by a visit to
the College of Surgeons, situated in the great square called Lincoln’s
Inn Fields. Here was a motive for a walk--with an occupation at the end
of it, which only involved a question to a Curator, and an examination
of a Specimen. He locked up his manuscript, and set forth for Lincoln’s
Inn Fields.




CHAPTER II.

When two friends happen to meet in the street, do they ever look back
along the procession of small circumstances which has led them both,
from the starting-point of their own houses, to the same spot, at the
same time? Not one man in ten thousand has probably ever thought of
making such a fantastic inquiry as this. And consequently not one man in
ten thousand, living in the midst of reality, has discovered that he is
also living in the midst of romance.

From the moment when the young surgeon closed the door of his house,
he was walking blindfold on his way to a patient in the future who was
personally still a stranger to him. He never reached the College of
Surgeons. He never embarked on his friend’s yacht.

What were the obstacles which turned him aside from the course that he
had in view? Nothing but a series of trivial circumstances, occurring in
the experience of a man who goes out for a walk.

He had only reached the next street, when the first of the circumstances
presented itself in the shape of a friend’s carriage, which drew up at
his side. A bright benevolent face encircled by bushy white whiskers,
looked out of the window, and a hearty voice asked him if he had
completed his arrangements for a long holiday. Having replied to this,
Ovid had a question to put, on his side.

“How is our patient, Sir Richard?”

“Out of danger.”

“And what do the other doctors say now?”

Sir Richard laughed: “They say it’s my luck.”

“Not convinced yet?”

“Not in the least. Who has ever succeeded in convincing fools? Let’s try
another subject. Is your mother reconciled to your new plans?”

“I can hardly tell you. My mother is in a state of indescribable
agitation. Her brother’s Will has been found in Italy. And his daughter
may arrive in England at a moment’s notice.”

“Unmarried?” Sir Richard asked slyly.

“I don’t know.”

“Any money?”

Ovid smiled--not cheerfully. “Do you think my poor mother would be in a
state of indescribable agitation if there was _not_ money?”

Sir Richard was one of those obsolete elderly persons who quote
Shakespeare. “Ah, well,” he said, “your mother is like Kent in King
Lear--she’s too old to learn. Is she as fond as ever of lace? and as
keen as ever after a bargain?” He handed a card out of the carriage
window. “I have just seen an old patient of mine,” he resumed, “in whom
I feel a friendly interest. She is retiring from business by my advice;
and she asks me, of all the people in the world, to help her in getting
rid of some wonderful ‘remnants,’ at ‘an alarming sacrifice!’ My kind
regards to your mother--and there’s a chance for her. One last word,
Ovid. Don’t be in too great a hurry to return to work; you have plenty
of spare time before you. Look at my wise dog here, on the front seat,
and learn from him to be idle and happy.”

The great physician had another companion, besides his dog. A friend,
bound his way, had accepted a seat in the carriage. “Who is that
handsome young man?” the friend asked as they drove away.

“He is the only son of a relative of mine, dead many years since,” Sir
Richard replied. “Don’t forget that you have seen him.”

“May I ask why?”

“He has not yet reached the prime of life; and he is on the way--already
far on the way--to be one of the foremost men of his time. With a
private fortune, he has worked as few surgeons work who have their bread
to get by their profession. The money comes from his late father. His
mother has married again. The second husband is a lazy, harmless
old fellow, named Gallilee; possessed of one small attraction--fifty
thousand pounds, grubbed up in trade. There are two little daughters,
by the second marriage. With such a stepfather as I have described, and,
between ourselves, with a mother who has rather more than her fair share
of the jealous, envious, and money-loving propensities of humanity, my
friend Ovid is not diverted by family influences from the close pursuit
of his profession. You will tell me, he may marry. Well! if he gets a
good wife she will be a circumstance in his favour. But, so far as I
know, he is not that sort of man. Cooler, a deal cooler, with women than
I am--though I am old enough to be his father. Let us get back to his
professional prospects. You heard him ask me about a patient?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. Death was knocking hard at that patient’s door, when I
called Ovid into consultation with myself and with two other doctors
who differed with me. It was one of the very rare cases in which the old
practice of bleeding was, to my mind, the only treatment to pursue. I
never told him that this was the point in dispute between me and the
other men--and they said nothing, on their side, at my express request.
He took his time to examine and think; and he saw the chance of saving
the patient by venturing on the use of the lancet as plainly as I
did--with my forty years’ experience to teach me! A young man with that
capacity for discovering the remote cause of disease, and with that
superiority to the trammels of routine in applying the treatment, has no
common medical career before him. His holiday will set his health right
in next to no time. I see nothing in his way, at present--not even a
woman! But,” said Sir Richard, with the explanatory wink of one eye
peculiar (like quotation from Shakespeare) to persons of the obsolete
old time, _“we_ know better than to forecast the weather if a petticoat
influence appears on the horizon. One prediction, however, I do risk.
If his mother buys any of that lace--I know who will get the best of the
bargain!”

The conditions under which the old doctor was willing to assume the
character of a prophet never occurred. Ovid remembered that he was going
away on a long voyage--and Ovid was a good son. He bought some of the
lace, as a present to his mother at parting; and, most assuredly, he got
the worst of the bargain.

His shortest way back to the straight course, from which he had deviated
in making his purchase, led him into a by-street, near the flower and
fruit market of Covent Garden. Here he met with the second in number of
the circumstances which attended his walk. He found himself encountered
by an intolerably filthy smell.

The market was not out of the direct way to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He
fled from the smell to the flowery and fruity perfumes of Covent
Garden, and completed the disinfecting process by means of a basket of
strawberries.

Why did a poor ragged little girl, carrying a big baby, look with such
longing eyes at the delicious fruit, that, as a kind-hearted man, he had
no alternative but to make her a present of the strawberries? Why did
two dirty boyfriends of hers appear immediately afterwards with news of
Punch in a neighbouring street, and lead the little girl away with them?
Why did these two new circumstances inspire him with a fear that the
boys might take the strawberries away from the poor child, burdened
as she was with a baby almost as big as herself? When we suffer from
overwrought nerves we are easily disturbed by small misgivings. The idle
man of wearied mind followed the friends of the street drama to see what
happened, forgetful of the College of Surgeons, and finding a new fund
of amusement in himself.

Arrived in the neighbouring street, he discovered that the Punch
performance had come to an end--like some other dramatic performances
of higher pretensions--for want of a paying audience. He waited at a
certain distance, watching the children. His doubts had done them an
injustice. The boys only said, “Give us a taste.” And the liberal little
girl rewarded their good conduct. An equitable and friendly division of
the strawberries was made in a quiet corner.

Where--always excepting the case of a miser or a millionaire--is the man
to be found who could have returned to the pursuit of his own affairs,
under these circumstances, without encouraging the practice of the
social virtues by a present of a few pennies? Ovid was not that man.

Putting back in his breast-pocket the bag in which he was accustomed to
carry small coins for small charities, his hand touched something which
felt like the envelope of a letter. He took it out--looked at it with
an expression of annoyance and surprise--and once more turned aside from
the direct way to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

The envelope contained his last prescription. Having occasion to consult
the “Pharmacopoeia,” he had written it at home, and had promised to send
it to the patient immediately. In the absorbing interest of making
his preparations for leaving England, it had remained forgotten in his
pocket for nearly two days. The one means of setting this unlucky error
right, without further delay, was to deliver his prescription himself,
and to break through his own rules for the second time by attending to a
case of illness--purely as an act of atonement.

The patient lived in a house nearly opposite to the British Museum. In
this northward direction he now set his face.

He made his apologies, and gave his advice--and, getting out again
into the street, tried once more to shape his course for the College
of Surgeons. Passing the walled garden of the British Museum, he looked
towards it--and paused. What had stopped him, this time? Nothing but a
tree, fluttering its bright leaves in the faint summer air.

A marked change showed itself in his face.

The moment before he had been passing in review the curious little
interruptions which had attended his walk, and had wondered humorously
what would happen next. Two women, meeting him, and seeing a smile on
his lips, had said to each other, “There goes a happy man.” If they had
encountered him now, they might have reversed their opinion. They would
have seen a man thinking of something once dear to him, in the far and
unforgotten past.

He crossed over the road to the side-street which faced the garden. His
head drooped; he moved mechanically. Arrived in the street, he lifted
his eyes, and stood (within nearer view of it) looking at the tree.

Hundreds of miles away from London, under another tree of that gentle
family, this man--so cold to women in after life--had made child-love,
in the days of his boyhood, to a sweet little cousin long since numbered
with the dead. The present time, with its interests and anxieties,
passed away like the passing of a dream. Little by little, as the
minutes followed each other, his sore heart felt a calming influence,
breathed mysteriously from the fluttering leaves. Still forgetful of
the outward world, he wandered slowly up the street; living in the old
scenes; thinking, not unhappily now, the old thoughts.

Where, in all London, could he have found a solitude more congenial to a
dreamer in daylight?

The broad district, stretching northward and eastward from the British
Museum, is like the quiet quarter of a country town set in the midst of
the roaring activities of the largest city in the world. Here, you can
cross the road, without putting limb or life in peril. Here, when you
are idle, you can saunter and look about, safe from collision with
merciless straight-walkers whose time is money, and whose destiny is
business. Here, you may meet undisturbed cats on the pavement, in the
full glare of noontide, and may watch, through the railings of the
squares, children at play on grass that almost glows with the lustre of
the Sussex Downs. This haven of rest is alike out of the way of fashion
and business; and is yet within easy reach of the one and the other.
Ovid paused in a vast and silent square. If his little cousin had lived,
he might perhaps have seen his children at play in some such secluded
place as this.

The birds were singing blithely in the trees. A tradesman’s boy,
delivering fish to the cook, and two girls watering flowers at a window,
were the only living creatures near him, as he roused himself and looked
around.

Where was the College? Where were the Curator and the Specimen? Those
questions brought with them no feeling of anxiety or surprise. He
turned, in a half-awakened way, without a wish or a purpose--turned, and
listlessly looked back.

Two foot-passengers, dressed in mourning garments, were rapidly
approaching him. One of them, as they came nearer, proved to be an aged
woman. The other was a girl.

He drew aside to let them pass. They looked at him with the lukewarm
curiosity of strangers, as they went by. The girl’s eyes and his met.
Only the glance of an instant--and its influence held him for life.

She went swiftly on, as little impressed by the chance meeting as the
old woman at her side. Without stopping to think--without being capable
of thought--Ovid followed them. Never before had he done what he was
doing now; he was, literally, out of himself. He saw them ahead of him,
and he saw nothing else.

Towards the middle of the square, they turned aside into a street on the
left. A concert-hall was in the street--with doors open for an afternoon
performance. They entered the hall. Still out of himself, Ovid followed
them.




CHAPTER III.

A room of magnificent size; furnished with every conventional luxury
that money can buy; lavishly provided with newspapers and books of
reference; lighted by tall windows in the day-time, and by gorgeous
chandeliers at night, may be nevertheless one of the dreariest places of
rest and shelter that can be found on the civilised earth. Such places
exist, by hundreds, in those hotels of monstrous proportions and
pretensions, which now engulf the traveller who ends his journey on the
pier or the platform. It may be that we feel ourselves to be strangers
among strangers--it may be that there is something innately repellent in
splendid carpets and curtains, chairs and tables, which have no social
associations to recommend them--it may be that the mind loses its
elasticity under the inevitable restraint on friendly communication,
which expresses itself in lowered tones and instinctive distrust of
our next neighbour; but this alone is certain: life, in the public
drawing-room of a great hotel, is life with all its healthiest
emanations perishing in an exhausted receiver.

On the same day, and nearly at the same hour, when Ovid had left his
house, two women sat in a corner of the public room, in one of the
largest of the railway hotels latterly built in London.

Without observing it themselves, they were objects of curiosity to their
fellow-travellers. They spoke to each other in a foreign language.
They were dressed in deep mourning--with an absence of fashion and a
simplicity of material which attracted the notice of every other woman
in the room. One of them wore a black veil over her gray hair. Her hands
were brown, and knotty at the joints; her eyes looked unnaturally bright
for her age; innumerable wrinkles crossed and re-crossed her skinny
face; and her aquiline nose (as one of the ladies present took occasion
to remark) was so disastrously like the nose of the great Duke of
Wellington as to be an offensive feature in the face of a woman.

The lady’s companion, being a man, took a more merciful view. “She can’t
help being ugly,” he whispered. “But see how she looks at the girl with
her. A good old creature, I say, if ever there was one yet.” The lady
eyed him, as only a jealous woman can eye her husband, and whispered
back, “Of course you’re in love with that slip of a girl!”

She _was_ a slip of a girl--and not even a tall slip. At seventeen years
of age, it was doubtful whether she would ever grow to a better height.

But a girl who is too thin, and not even so tall as the Venus de’
Medici, may still be possessed of personal attractions. It was not
altogether a matter of certainty, in this case, that the attractions
were sufficiently remarkable to excite general admiration. The fine
colour and the plump healthy cheeks, the broad smile, and the regular
teeth, the well-developed mouth, and the promising bosom which form
altogether the average type of beauty found in the purely bred English
maiden, were not among the noticeable charms of the small creature in
gloomy black, shrinking into a corner of the big room. She had very
little colour of any sort to boast of. Her hair was of so light a brown
that it just escaped being flaxen; but it had the negative merit of
not being forced down to her eyebrows, and twisted into the hideous
curly-wig which exhibits a liberal equality of ugliness on the heads
of women in the present day. There was a delicacy of finish in her
features--in the nose and the lips especially--a sensitive changefulness
in the expression of her eyes (too dark in themselves to be quite in
harmony with her light hair), and a subtle yet simple witchery in
her rare smile, which atoned, in some degree at least, for want of
complexion in the face and of flesh in the figure. Men might dispute
her claims to beauty--but no one could deny that she was, in the common
phrase, an interesting person. Grace and refinement; a quickness of
apprehension and a vivacity of movement, suggestive of some foreign
origin; a childish readiness of wonder, in the presence of new
objects--and perhaps, under happier circumstances, a childish
playfulness with persons whom she loved--were all characteristic
attractions of the modest stranger who was in the charge of the ugly old
woman, and who was palpably the object of that wrinkled duenna’s devoted
love.

A travelling writing-case stood open on a table near them. In an
interval of silence the girl looked at it reluctantly. They had been
talking of family affairs--and had spoken in Italian, so as to keep
their domestic secrets from the ears of the strangers about them. The
old woman was the first to resume the conversation.

“My Carmina, you really ought to write that letter,” she said; “the
illustrious Mrs. Gallilee is waiting to hear of our arrival in London.”

Carmina took up the pen, and put it down again with a sigh. “We only
arrived last night,” she pleaded. “Dear old Teresa, let us have one day
in London by ourselves!”

Teresa received this proposal with undisguised amazement and alarm,

“Jesu Maria! a day in London--and your aunt waiting for you all the
time! She is your second mother, my dear, by appointment; and her house
is your new home. And you propose to stop a whole day at an hotel,
instead of going home. Impossible! Write, my Carmina--write. See, here
is the address on a card:--‘Fairfield Gardens.’ What a pretty place
it must be to live in, with such a name as that! And a sweet lady, no
doubt. Come! Come!”

But Carmina still resisted. “I have never even seen my aunt,” she said.
“It is dreadful to pass my life with a stranger. Remember, I was only
a child when you came to us after my mother’s death. It is hardly six
months yet since I lost my father. I have no one but you, and, when I go
to this new home, you will leave me. I only ask for one more day to be
together, before we part.”

The poor old duenna drew back out of sight, in the shadow of a
curtain--and began to cry. Carmina took her hand, under cover of
a tablecloth; Carmina knew how to console her. “We will go and see
sights,” she whispered “and, when dinner-time comes, you shall have a
glass of the Porto-porto-wine.”

Teresa looked round out of the shadow, as easily comforted as a child.
“Sights!” she exclaimed--and dried her tears. “Porto-porto-wine!” she
repeated--and smacked her withered lips at the relishing words. “Ah,
my child, you have not forgotten the consolations I told you of, when
I lived in London in my young days. To think of you, with an English
father, and never in London till now! I used to go to museums and
concerts sometimes, when my English mistress was pleased with me. That
gracious lady often gave me a glass of the fine strong purple wine. The
Holy Virgin grant that Aunt Gallilee may be as kind a woman! Such a head
of hair as the other one she cannot hope to have. It was a joy to dress
it. Do you think I wouldn’t stay here in England with you if I could?
What is to become of my old man in Italy, with his cursed asthma, and
nobody to nurse him? Oh, but those were dull years in London! The black
endless streets--the dreadful Sundays--the hundreds of thousands of
people, always in a hurry; always with grim faces set on business,
business, business! I was glad to go back and be married in Italy. And
here I am in London again, after God knows how many years. No matter.
We will enjoy ourselves to-day; and when we go to Madam Gallilee’s
to-morrow, we will tell a little lie, and say we only arrived on the
evening that has not yet come.”

The duenna’s sense of humour was so tickled by this prospective view of
the little lie, that she leaned back in her chair and laughed. Carmina’s
rare smile showed itself faintly. The terrible first interview with the
unknown aunt still oppressed her. She took up a newspaper in despair.
“Oh, my old dear!” she said, “let us get out of this dreadful room, and
be reminded of Italy!” Teresa lifted her ugly hands in bewilderment.
“Reminded of Italy--in London?”

“Is there no Italian music in London?” Carmina asked suggestively.

The duenna’s bright eyes answered this in their own language. She
snatched up the nearest newspaper.

It was then the height of the London concert season. Morning
performances of music were announced in rows. Reading the advertised
programmes, Carmina found them, in one remarkable respect, all alike.
They would have led an ignorant stranger to wonder whether any such
persons as Italian composers, French composers, and English composers
had ever existed. The music offered to the English public was music of
exclusively German (and for the most part modern German) origin. Carmina
held the opinion--in common with Mozart and Rossini, as well as other
people--that music without melody is not music at all. She laid aside
the newspaper.

The plan of going to a concert being thus abandoned, the idea occurred
to them of seeing pictures. Teresa, in search of information, tried her
luck at a great table in the middle of the room, on which useful books
were liberally displayed. She returned with a catalogue of the Royal
Academy Exhibition (which someone had left on the table), and with the
most universally well-informed book, on a small scale, that has ever
enlightened humanity--modestly described on the title-page as an
Almanac.

Carmina opened the catalogue at the first page, and discovered a list of
Royal Academicians. Were all these gentlemen celebrated painters? Out
of nearly forty names, three only had made themselves generally known
beyond the limits of England. She turned to the last page. The works of
art on show numbered more than fifteen hundred. Teresa, looking over her
shoulder, made the same discovery. “Our heads will ache, and our feet
will ache,” she remarked, “before we get out of that place.” Carmina
laid aside the catalogue.

Teresa opened the Almanac at hazard, and hit on the page devoted
to Amusements. Her next discovery led her to the section inscribed
“Museums.” She scored an approving mark at that place with her
thumbnail--and read the list in fluent broken English.

The British Museum? Teresa’s memory of that magnificent building
recalled it vividly in one respect. She shook her head. “More headache
and footache, there!” Bethnal Green; Indian Museum; College of Surgeons;
Practical Geology; South Kensington; Patent Museum--all unknown to
Teresa. “The saints preserve us! what headaches and footaches in all
these, if they are as big as that other one!” She went on with the
list--and astonished everybody in the room by suddenly clapping her
hands. Sir John Soane’s Museum, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. “Ah, but I
remember that! A nice little easy museum in a private house, and all
sorts of pretty things to see. My dear love, trust your old Teresa. Come
to Soane!”

In ten minutes more they were dressed, and on the steps of the hotel.
The bright sunlight, the pleasant air, invited them to walk. On the same
afternoon, when Ovid had set forth on foot for Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
Carmina and Teresa set forth on foot for Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Trivial
obstacles had kept the man away from the College. Would trivial
obstacles keep the women away from the Museum?

They crossed the Strand, and entered a street which led out of it
towards the North; Teresa’s pride in her memory forbidding her thus far
to ask their way.

Their talk--dwelling at first on Italy, and on the memory of Carmina’s
Italian mother--reverted to the formidable subject of Mrs. Gallilee.
Teresa’s hopeful view of the future turned to the cousins, and drew
the picture of two charming little girls, eagerly waiting to give their
innocent hearts to their young relative from Italy. “Are there only
two?” she said. “Surely you told me there was a boy, besides the girls?”
 Carmina set her right. “My cousin Ovid is a great doctor,” she continued
with an air of importance. “Poor papa used to say that our family would
have reason to be proud of him.” “Does he live at home?” asked simple
Teresa. “Oh, dear, no! He has a grand house of his own. Hundreds of
sick people go there to be cured, and give hundreds of golden
guineas.” Hundreds of golden guineas gained by only curing sick people,
represented to Teresa’s mind something in the nature of a miracle: she
solemnly raised her eyes to heaven. “What a cousin to have! Is he young?
is he handsome? is he married?”

Instead of answering these questions, Carmina looked over her shoulder.
“Is this poor creature following us?” she asked.

They had now turned to the right, and had entered a busy street leading
directly to Covent Garden. The “creature” (who was undoubtedly following
them) was one of the starved and vagabond dogs of London. Every now and
then, the sympathies of their race lead these inveterate wanderers to
attach themselves, for the time, to some human companion, whom their
mysterious insight chooses from the crowd. Teresa, with the hard feeling
towards animals which is one of the serious defects of the Italian
character, cried, “Ah, the mangy beast!” and lifted her umbrella. The
dog starred back, waited a moment, and followed them again as they went
on.

Carmina’s gentle heart gave its pity to this lost and hungry
fellow-creature. “I must buy that poor dog something to eat,” she
said--and stopped suddenly as the idea struck her.

The dog, accustomed to kicks and curses, was ignorant of kindness.
Following close behind her, when she checked herself, he darted away in
terror into the road. A cab was driven by rapidly at the same moment.
The wheel passed over the dog’s neck. And there was an end, as a man
remarked looking on, of the troubles of a cur.

This common accident struck the girl’s sensitive nature with horror.
Helpless and speechless, she trembled piteously. The nearest open door
was the door of a music-seller’s shop. Teresa led her in, and asked for
a chair and a glass of water. The proprietor, feeling the interest in
Carmina which she seldom failed to inspire among strangers, went the
length of offering her a glass of wine. Preferring water, she soon
recovered herself sufficiently to be able to leave her chair.

“May I change my mind about going to the museum?” she said to her
companion. “After what has happened, I hardly feel equal to looking at
curiosities.”

Teresa’s ready sympathy tried to find some acceptable alternative.
“Music would be better, wouldn’t it?” she suggested.

The so-called Italian Opera was open that night, and the printed
announcement of the performance was in the shop. They both looked at
it. Fortune was still against them. A German opera appeared on the bill.
Carmina turned to the music-seller in despair. “Is there no music,
sir, but German music to be heard in London?” she asked. The hospitable
shopkeeper produced a concert programmed for that afternoon--the modest
enterprise of an obscure piano-forte teacher, who could only venture to
address pupils, patrons, and friends. What did he promise? Among other
things, music from “Lucia,” music from “Norma,” music from “Ernani.”
 Teresa made another approving mark with her thumb-nail; and Carmina
purchased tickets.

The music-seller hurried to the door to stop the first empty cab that
might pass. Carmina showed a deplorable ignorance of the law of chances.
She shrank from the bare idea of getting into a cab. “We may run over
some other poor creature,” she said. “If it isn’t a dog, it may be
a child next time.” Teresa and the music-seller suggested a more
reasonable view as gravely as they could. Carmina humbly submitted to
the claims of common sense--without yielding, for all that. “I know I’m
wrong,” she confessed. “Don’t spoil my pleasure; I can’t do it!”

The strange parallel was now complete. Bound for the same destination,
Carmina and Ovid had failed to reach it alike. And Carmina had stopped
to look at the garden of the British Museum, before she overtook Ovid in
the quiet square.




CHAPTER IV.

If, on entering the hall, Ovid had noticed the placards, he would have
found himself confronted by a coincidence. The person who gave the
concert was also the person who taught music to his half-sisters. Not
many days since, he had himself assisted the enterprise, by taking
a ticket at his mother’s request. Seeing nothing, remembering
nothing--hurried by the fear of losing sight of the two strangers if
there was a large audience--he impatiently paid for another ticket, at
the doors.

The room was little more than half full, and so insufficiently
ventilated that the atmosphere was oppressive even under those
circumstances. He easily discovered the two central chairs, in the
midway row of seats, which she and her companion had chosen. There was a
vacant chair (among many others) at one extremity of the row in front
of them. He took that place. To look at her, without being
discovered--there, so far, was the beginning and the end of his utmost
desire.

The performances had already begun. So long as her attention was
directed to the singers and players on the platform, he could feast his
eyes on her with impunity. In an unoccupied interval, she looked at the
audience--and discovered him.

Had he offended her?

If appearances were to be trusted, he had produced no impression of any
sort. She quietly looked away, towards the other side of the room.
The mere turning of her head was misinterpreted by Ovid as an implied
rebuke. He moved to the row of seats behind her. She was now nearer to
him than she had been yet. He was again content, and more than content.
The next performance was a solo on the piano. A round of applause
welcomed the player. Ovid looked at the platform for the first time.
In the bowing man, with a prematurely bald head and a servile smile,
he recognized Mrs. Gallilee’s music-master. The inevitable inference
followed. His mother might be in the room.

After careful examination of the scanty audience, he failed to discover
her--thus far. She would certainly arrive, nevertheless. My money’s
worth for my money was a leading principle in Mrs. Gallilee’s life.

He sighed as he looked towards the door of entrance. Not for long had
he revelled in the luxury of a new happiness. He had openly avowed his
dislike of concerts, when his mother had made him take a ticket for this
concert. With her quickness of apprehension what might she not suspect,
if she found him among the audience?

Come what might of it, he still kept his place; he still feasted his
eyes on the slim figure of the young girl, on the gentle yet spirited
carriage of her head. But the pleasure was no longer pleasure without
alloy. His mother had got between them now.

The solo on the piano came to an end.

In the interval that followed, he turned once more towards the entrance.
Just as he was looking away again, he heard Mrs. Gallilee’s loud voice.
She was administering a maternal caution to one of the children. “Behave
better here than you behaved in the carriage, or I shall take you away.”

If she found him in his present place--if she put her own clever
construction on what she saw--her opinion would assuredly express itself
in some way. She was one of those women who can insult another woman
(and safely disguise it) by an inquiring look. For the girl’s sake, Ovid
instantly moved away from her to the seats at the back of the hall.

Mrs. Gallilee made a striking entrance--dressed to perfection; powdered
and painted to perfection; leading her daughters, and followed by her
governess. The usher courteously indicated places near the platform.
Mrs. Galilee astonished him by a little lecture on acoustics, delivered
with the sweetest condescension. Her Christian humility smiled, and call
the usher, Sir. “Sound, sir, is most perfectly heard towards the centre
of the auditorium.” She led the way towards the centre. Vacant places
invited her to the row of seats occupied by Carmina and Teresa. She, the
unknown aunt, seated herself next to the unknown niece.

They looked at each other.

Perhaps, it was the heat of the room. Perhaps, she had not perfectly
recovered the nervous shock of seeing the dog killed. Carmina’s head
sank on good Teresa’s shoulder. She had fainted.




CHAPTER V.

“May I ask for a cup of tea, Miss Minerva?”

“Delighted, I’m sure, Mr. Le Frank.”

“And was Mrs. Gallilee pleased with the Concert?”

“Charmed.”

Mr. Le Frank shook his head. “I am afraid there was a drawback,”
 he suggested. “You forget the lady who fainted. So alarming to the
audience. So disagreeable to the artists.”

“Take care, Mr. Le Frank! These new houses are flimsily built; they
might hear you upstairs. The fainting lady is upstairs. All the elements
of a romance are upstairs. Is your tea to your liking?”

In this playfully provocative manner, Miss Minerva (the governess)
trifled with the curiosity of Mr. Le Frank (the music-master), as the
proverbial cat trifles with the terror of the captive mouse. The man
of the bald head and the servile smile showed a polite interest in the
coming disclosure; he opened his deeply-sunk eyes, and lazily lifted his
delicate eyebrows.

He had called at Mrs. Gallilee’s house, after the concert, to get
a little tea (with a large infusion of praise) in the schoolroom. A
striking personal contrast confronted him, in the face of the lady who
was dispensing the hospitalities of the table. Mr. Le Frank’s plump
cheeks were, in colour, of the obtrusively florid sort. The relics of
yellow hair, still adhering to the sides of his head, looked as silkily
frail as spun glass. His noble beard made amends for his untimely
baldness. The glossy glory of it exhaled delicious perfumes; the keenest
eyes might have tried in vain to discover a hair that was out of place.
Miss Minerva’s eager sallow face, so lean, and so hard, and so long,
looked, by contrast, as if it wanted some sort of discreet covering
thrown over some part of it. Her coarse black hair projected like a
penthouse over her bushy black eyebrows and her keen black eyes.
Oh, dear me (as they said in the servants’ hall), she would never be
married--so yellow and so learned, so ugly and so poor! And yet, if
mystery is interesting, this was an interesting woman. The people about
her felt an uneasy perception of something secret, ominously secret,
in the nature of the governess which defied detection. If Inquisitive
Science, vowed to medical research, could dissect firmness of will,
working at its steadiest repressive action--then, the mystery of Miss
Minerva’s inner nature might possibly have been revealed. As it was,
nothing more remarkable exposed itself to view than an irritable temper;
serving perhaps as safety-valve to an underlying explosive force, which
(with strong enough temptation and sufficient opportunity) might yet
break out.

“Gently, Mr. Le Frank! The tea is hot--you may burn your mouth. How am
I to tell you what has happened?” Miss Minerva dropped the playfully
provocative tone, with infinite tact, exactly at the right moment. “Just
imagine,” she resumed, “a scene on the stage, occurring in private life.
The lady who fainted at your concert, turns out to be no less a person
that Mrs. Gallilee’s niece!”

The general folly which reads a prospectus and blindly speculates in
shares, is matched by the equally diffused stupidity, which is incapable
of discovering that there can be any possible relation between fiction
and truth. Say it’s in a novel--and you are a fool if you believe it.
Say it’s in a newspaper--and you are a fool if you doubt it. Mr. Le
Frank, following the general example, followed it on this occasion a
little too unreservedly. He avowed his doubts of the circumstance just
related, although it was, on the authority of a lady, a circumstance
occurring in real life! Far from being offended, Miss Minerva cordially
sympathized with him.

“It _is_ too theatrical to be believed,” she admitted; “but this
fainting young person is positively the interesting stranger we have
been expecting from Italy. You know Mrs. Gallilee. Hers was the first
smelling-bottle produced; hers was the presence of mind which suggested
a horizontal position. ‘Help the heart,’ she said; ‘don’t impede it.’
The whole theory of fainting fits, in six words! In another moment,”
 proceeded the governess making a theatrical point without suspecting
it--“in another moment, Mrs. Gallilee herself stood in need of the
smelling-bottle.”

Mr. Le Frank was not a true believer, even yet. “You don’t mean _she_
fainted!” he said.

Miss Minerva held up the indicative forefinger, with which she
emphasized instruction when her pupils required rousing. “Mrs.
Gallilee’s strength of mind--as I was about to say, if you had listened
to me--resisted the shock. What the effort must have cost her you will
presently understand. Our interesting young lady was accompanied by a
hideous old foreign woman who completely lost her head. She smacked
her hands distractedly; she called on the saints (without producing the
slightest effect)--but she mixed up a name, remarkable even in Italy,
with the rest of the delirium; and _that_ was serious. Put yourself in
Mrs. Gallilee’s place--”

“I couldn’t do it,” said Mr. Le Frank, with humility.

Miss Minerva passed over this reply without notice. Perhaps she was not
a believer in the humility of musicians.

“The young lady’s Christian name,” she proceeded, “is Carmina; (put
the accent, if you please, on the _first_ syllable). The moment Mrs.
Gallilee heard the name, it struck her like a blow. She enlightened the
old woman, and asserted herself as Miss Carmina’s aunt in an instant.
‘I am Mrs. Gallilee:’ that was all she said. The result”--Miss Minerva
paused, and pointed to the ceiling; “the result is up there. Our
charming guest was on the sofa, and the hideous old nurse was fanning
her, when I had the honour of seeing them just now. No, Mr. Le Frank!
I haven’t done yet. There is a last act in this drama of private life
still to relate. A medical gentleman was present at the concert, who
offered his services in reviving Miss Carmina. The same gentleman is now
in attendance on the interesting patient. Can you guess who he is?”

Mr. Le Frank had sold a ticket for his concert to the medical adviser of
the family--one Mr. Null. A cautious guess in this direction seemed to
offer the likeliest chance of success.

“He is a patron of music,” the pianist began.

“He hates music,” the governess interposed.

“I mean Mr. Null,” Mr. Le Frank persisted.

_“I_ mean--” Miss Minerva paused (like the cat with the mouse
again!)--_“I_ mean, Mr. Ovid Vere.”

What form the music-master’s astonishment might have assumed may be
matter for speculation, it was never destined to become matter of fact.
At the moment when Miss Minerva overwhelmed him with the climax of her
story, a little, rosy, elderly gentleman, with a round face, a sweet
smile, and a curly gray head, walked into the room, accompanied by two
girls. Persons of small importance--only Mr. Gallilee and his daughters.

“How d’ye-do, Mr. Le Frank. I hope you got plenty of money by the
concert. I gave away my own two tickets. You will excuse me, I’m sure.
Music, I can’t think why, always sends me to sleep. Here are your two
pupils, Miss Minerva, safe and sound. It struck me we were rather in the
way, when that sweet young creature was brought home. Sadly in want
of quiet, poor thing--not in want of _us._ Mrs. Gallilee and Ovid, so
clever and attentive, were just the right people in the right place. So
I put on my hat--I’m always available, Mr. Le Frank; I have the great
advantage of never having anything to do--and I said to the girls,
‘Let’s have a walk.’ We had no particular place to go to--that’s another
advantage of mine--so we drifted about. I didn’t mean it, but, somehow
or other, we stopped at a pastry-cook’s shop. What was the name of the
pastry-cook?”

So far Mr. Gallilee proceeded, speaking in the oddest self-contradictory
voice, if such a description is permissible--a voice at once high in
pitch and mild in tone: in short, as Mr. Le Frank once professionally
remarked, a soft falsetto. When the good gentleman paused to make his
little effort of memory, his eldest daughter--aged twelve, and always
ready to distinguish herself--saw her opportunity, and took the rest of
the narrative into her own hands.

Miss Maria, named after her mother, was one of the successful new
products of the age we live in--the conventionally-charming child (who
has never been smacked); possessed of the large round eyes that we see
in pictures, and the sweet manners and perfect principles that we read
of in books. She called everybody “dear;” she knew to a nicety how much
oxygen she wanted in the composition of her native air; and--alas, poor
wretch!--she had never wetted her shoes or dirtied her face since the
day when she was born.

“Dear Miss Minerva,” said Maria, “the pastry-cook’s name was Timbal. We
have had ices.”

His mind being now set at rest on the subject of the pastry-cook, Mr.
Gallilee turned to his youngest daughter--aged ten, and one of the
unsuccessful products of the age we live in. This was a curiously
slow, quaint, self-contained child; the image of her father, with an
occasional reflection of his smile; incurably stupid, or incurably
perverse--the friends of the family were not quite sure which. Whether
she might have been over-crammed with useless knowledge, was not a
question in connection with the subject which occurred to anybody.

“Rouse yourself, Zo,” said Mr. Gallilee. “What did we have besides
ices?”

Zoe (known to her father, by vulgar abbreviation, as “Zo”) took Mr.
Gallilee’s stumpy red hand, and held hard by it as if that was the
one way in which a dull child could rouse herself, with a prospect of
success.

“I’ve had so many of them,” she said; “I don’t know. Ask Maria.”

Maria responded with the sweetest readiness. “Dear Zoe, you are so slow!
Cheesecakes.”

Mr. Gallilee patted Zoe’s head as encouragingly as if she had discovered
the right answer by herself. “That’s right--ices and cheese-cakes,” he
said. “We tried cream-ice, and then we tried water-ice. The children,
Miss Minerva, preferred the cream-ice. And, do you know, I’m of their
opinion. There’s something in a cream-ice--what do you think yourself of
cream-ices, Mr. Le Frank?”

It was one among the many weaknesses of Mr. Gallilee’s character to be
incapable of opening his lips without, sooner or later, taking somebody
into his confidence. In the merest trifles, he instinctively invited
sympathy and agreement from any person within his reach--from a total
stranger quite as readily as from an intimate friend. Mr. Le Frank,
representing the present Court of Social Appeal, attempted to deliver
judgment on the question of ices, and was interrupted without ceremony
by Miss Minerva. She, too, had been waiting her opportunity to speak,
and she now took it--not amiably.

“With all possible respect, Mr. Gallilee, I venture to entreat that you
will be a little more thoughtful, where the children are concerned. I
beg your pardon, Mr. Le Frank, for interrupting you--but it is really
a little too hard on Me. I am held responsible for the health of these
girls; I am blamed over and over again, when it is not my fault, for
irregularities in their diet--and there they are, at this moment,
chilled with ices and cloyed with cakes! What will Mrs. Gallilee say?”

“Don’t tell her,” Mr. Gallilee suggested.

“The girls will be thirsty for the rest of the evening,” Miss Minerva
persisted; “the girls will have no appetite for the last meal before
bedtime. And their mother will ask Me what it means.”

“My good creature,” cried Mr. Gallilee, “don’t be afraid of the girls’
appetites! Take off their hats, and give them something nice for supper.
They inherit my stomach, Miss Minerva--and they’ll ‘tuck in,’ as we used
to say at school. Did they say so in your time, Mr. Le Frank?”

Mrs. Gallilee’s governess and vulgar expressions were anomalies never to
be reconciled, under any circumstances. Miss Minerva took off the hats
in stern silence. Even “Papa” might have seen the contempt in her face,
if she had not managed to hide it in this way, by means of the girls.

In the silence that ensued, Mr. Le Frank had his chance of speaking, and
showed himself to be a gentleman with a happily balanced character--a
musician, with an eye to business. Using gratitude to Mr. Gallilee as a
means of persuasion, he gently pushed the interests of a friend who was
giving a concert next week. “We poor artists have our faults, my dear
sir; but we are all earnest in helping each other. My friend sang for
nothing at my concert. Don’t suppose for a moment that he expects it of
me! But I am going to play for nothing at his concert. May I appeal to
your kind patronage to take two tickets?” The reply ended appropriately
in musical sound--a golden tinkling, in Mr. Le Frank’s pocket.

Having paid his tribute to art and artists, Mr. Gallilee looked
furtively at Miss Minerva. On the wise principle of letting well alone,
he perceived that the happy time had arrived for leaving the room. How
was he to make his exit? He prided himself on his readiness of resource,
in difficulties of this sort, and he was equal to the occasion as
usual--he said he would go to his club.

“We really have a capital smoking-room at that club,” he said. “I do
like a good cigar; and--what do _you_ think Mr. Le Frank?--isn’t a pint
of champagne nice drinking, this hot weather? Just cooled with ice--I
don’t know whether you feel the weather, Miss Minerva, as I do?--and
poured, fizzing, into a silver mug. Lord, how delicious! Good-bye,
girls. Give me a kiss before I go.”

Maria led the way, as became the elder. She not only gave the kiss, but
threw an appropriate sentiment into the bargain. “I do love you,
dear papa!” said this perfect daughter--with a look in Miss Minerva’s
direction, which might have been a malicious look in any eyes but
Maria’s.

Mr. Gallilee turned to his youngest child. “Well, Zo--what do _you_
say?”

Zo took her father’s hand once more, and rubbed her head against it like
a cat. This new method of expressing filial affection seemed to interest
Mr. Gallilee. “Does your head itch, my dear?” he asked. The idea was new
to Zo. She brightened, and looked at her father with a sly smile. “Why
do you do it?” Miss Minerva asked sharply. Zo clouded over again, and
answered, “I don’t know.” Mr. Gallilee rewarded her with a kiss, and
went away to champagne and the club.

Mr. Le Frank left the schoolroom next. He paid the governess the
compliment of reverting to her narrative of events at the concert.

“I am greatly struck,” he said, “by what you told me about Mr. Ovid
Vere. We may, perhaps, have misjudged him in thinking that he doesn’t
like music. His coming to my concert suggests a more cheering view. Do
you think there would be any impropriety in my calling to thank him?
Perhaps it would be better if I wrote, and enclosed two tickets for my
friend’s concert? To tell you the truth, I’ve pledged myself to dispose
of a certain number of tickets. My friend is so much in request--it’s
expecting too much to ask him to sing for nothing. I think I’ll write.
Good-evening!”

Left alone with her pupils, Miss Minerva looked at her watch. “Prepare
your lessons for to-morrow,” she said.

The girls produced their books. Maria’s library of knowledge was in
perfect order. The pages over which Zo pondered in endless perplexity
were crumpled by weary fingers, and stained by frequent tears. Oh, fatal
knowledge! mercifully forbidden to the first two of our race, who shall
count the crimes and stupidities committed in your name?

Miss Minerva leaned back in her easy-chair. Her mind was occupied by the
mysterious question of Ovid’s presence at the concert. She raised her
keenly penetrating eyes to the ceiling, and listened for sounds from
above.

“I wonder,” she thought to herself, “what they are doing upstairs?”




CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Gallilee was as complete a mistress of the practice of domestic
virtue as of the theory of acoustics and fainting fits. At dressing
with taste, and ordering dinners with invention; at heading her table
gracefully, and making her guests comfortable; at managing refractory
servants and detecting dishonest tradespeople, she was the equal of
the least intellectual woman that ever lived. Her preparations for the
reception of her niece were finished in advance, without an oversight
in the smallest detail. Carmina’s inviting bedroom, in blue, opened
into Carmina’s irresistible sitting-room, in brown. The ventilation
was arranged, the light and shade were disposed, the flowers were
attractively placed, under Mrs. Gallilee’s infallible superintendence.
Before Carmina had recovered her senses she was provided with a second
mother, who played the part to perfection.

The four persons, now assembled in the pretty sitting-room upstairs,
were in a position of insupportable embarrassment towards each other.

Finding her son at a concert (after he had told her that he hated music)
Mrs. Gallilee, had first discovered him hurrying to the assistance of
a young lady in a swoon, with all the anxiety and alarm which he might
have shown in the case of a near and dear friend. And yet, when this
stranger was revealed as a relation, he had displayed an amazement equal
to her own! What explanation could reconcile such contradictions as
these?

As for Carmina, her conduct complicated the mystery.

What was she doing at a concert, when she ought to have been on her way
to her aunt’s house? Why, if she must faint when the hot room had not
overpowered anyone else, had she failed to recover in the usual way?
There she lay on the sofa, alternately flushing and turning pale when
she was spoken to; ill at ease in the most comfortable house in London;
timid and confused under the care of her best friends. Making all
allowance for a sensitive temperament, could a long journey from Italy,
and a childish fright at seeing a dog run over, account for such a state
of things as this?

Annoyed and perplexed--but yet far too prudent to commit herself
ignorantly to inquiries which might lead to future embarrassment--Mrs.
Gallilee tried suggestive small talk as a means of enlightenment. The
wrinkled duenna, sitting miserably on satin supported by frail gilt
legs, seemed to take her tone of feeling from her young mistress,
exactly as she took her orders. Mrs. Gallilee spoke to her in English,
and spoke to her in Italian--and could make nothing of the experiment in
either case. The wild old creature seemed to be afraid to look at her.

Ovid himself proved to be just as difficult to fathom, in another way

He certainly answered when his mother spoke to him, but always briefly,
and in the same absent tone. He asked no questions, and offered no
explanations. The sense of embarrassment, on his side, had produced
unaccountable changes. He showed the needful attention to Carmina,
with a silent gentleness which presented him in a new character. His
customary manner with ailing persons, women as well as men, was rather
abrupt: his quick perception hurried him into taking the words out of
their mouths (too pleasantly to give offence) when they were describing
their symptoms. There he sat now, contemplating his pale little cousin,
with a patient attention wonderful to see; listening to the commonplace
words which dropped at intervals from her lips, as if--in his state of
health, and with the doubtful prospect which it implied--there were no
serious interests to occupy his mind.

Mrs. Gallilee could endure it no longer.

If she had not deliberately starved her imagination, and emptied her
heart of any tenderness of feeling which it might once have possessed,
her son’s odd behaviour would have interested instead of perplexing her.
As it was, her scientific education left her as completely in the dark,
where questions of sentiment were concerned, as if her experience of
humanity, in its relation to love, had been experience in the cannibal
islands. She decided on leaving her niece to repose, and on taking her
son away with her.

“In your present state of health, Ovid,” she began, “Carmina must not
accept your professional advice.”

Something in those words stung Ovid’s temper.

“My professional advice?” he repeated. “You talk as if she was seriously
ill!”

Carmina’s sweet smile stopped him there.

“We don’t know what may happen,” she said, playfully.

“God forbid _that_ should happen!” He spoke so fervently that the women
all looked at him in surprise.

Mrs. Gallilee turned to her niece, and proceeded quietly with what she
had to say.

“Ovid is so sadly overworked, my dear, that I actually rejoice in his
giving up practice, and going away from us to-morrow. We will leave you
for the present with your old friend. Pray ring, if you want anything.”
 She kissed her hand to Carmina, and, beckoning to her son, advanced
towards the door.

Teresa looked at her, and suddenly looked away again. Mrs. Gallilee
stopped on her way out, at a chiffonier, and altered the arrangement of
some of the china on it. The duenna followed on tiptoe--folded her thumb
and two middle fingers into the palm of her hand--and, stretching out
the forefinger and the little finger, touched Mrs. Gallilee on the back,
so softly that she was unaware of it. “The Evil Eye,” Teresa whispered
to herself in Italian, as she stole back to her place.

Ovid lingered near his cousin: neither of them had seen what Teresa
had done. He rose reluctantly to go. Feeling his little attentions
gratefully, Carmina checked him with innocent familiarity as he left his
chair. “I must thank you,” she said, simply; “it seems hard indeed that
you, who cure others, should suffer from illness yourself.”

Teresa, watching them with interest, came a little nearer.

She could now examine Ovid’s face with close and jealous scrutiny. Mrs.
Gallilee reminded her son that she was waiting for him. He had some last
words yet to say. The duenna drew back from the sofa, still looking at
Ovid: she muttered to herself, “Holy Teresa, my patroness, show me that
man’s soul in his face!” At last, Ovid took his leave. “I shall call and
see how you are to-morrow,” he said, “before I go.” He nodded kindly to
Teresa. Instead of being satisfied with that act of courtesy, she wanted
something more. “May I shake hands?” she asked. Mrs. Gallilee was a
Liberal in politics; never had her principles been tried, as they
were tried when she heard those words. Teresa wrung Ovid’s hand with
tremulous energy--still intent on reading his character in his face. He
asked her, smiling, what she saw to interest her. “A good man, I hope,”
 she answered, sternly. Carmina and Ovid were amused. Teresa rebuked
them, as if they had been children. “Laugh at some fitter time,” she
said, “not now.”

Descending the stairs, Mrs. Gallilee and Ovid met the footman. “Mr. Mool
is in the library, ma’am,” the man said.

“Have you anything to do, Ovid, for the next half-hour?” his mother
asked.

“Do you wish me to see Mr. Mool? If it’s law-business, I am afraid I
shall not be of much use.”

“The lawyer is here by appointment, with a copy of your late uncle’s
Will,” Mrs. Gallilee answered. “You may have some interest in it. I
think you ought to hear it read.”

Ovid showed no inclination to adopt this proposal. He asked an idle
question. “I heard of their finding the Will--are there any romantic
circumstances?”

Mrs. Gallilee surveyed her son with an expression of good-humoured
contempt. “What a boy you are, in some things! Have you been reading a
novel lately? My dear, when the people in Italy made up their minds, at
last, to have the furniture in your uncle’s room taken to pieces, they
found the Will. It had slipped behind a drawer, in a rotten old cabinet,
full of useless papers. Nothing romantic (thank God!), and nothing
(as Mr. Mool’s letter tells me) that can lead to misunderstandings or
disputes.”

Ovid’s indifference was not to be conquered. He left it to his mother to
send him word if he had a legacy “I am not as much interested in it as
you are,” he explained. “Plenty of money left to you, of course?” He was
evidently thinking all the time of something else.

Mrs. Gallilee stopped in the hall, with an air of downright alarm.

“Your mind is in a dreadful state,” she said.

“Have you really forgotten what I told you, only yesterday? The Will
appoints me Carmina’s guardian.”

He had plainly forgotten it--he started, when his mother recalled the
circumstance. “Curious,” he said to himself, “that I was not reminded of
it, when I saw Carmina’s rooms prepared for her.” His mother, anxiously
looking at him, observed that his face brightened when he spoke of
Carmina. He suddenly changed his mind.

“Make allowances for an overworked man,” he said. “You are quite right.
I ought to hear the Will read--I am at your service.”

Even Mrs. Gallilee now drew the right inference at last. She made no
remark. Something seemed to move feebly under her powder and paint. Soft
emotion trying to find its way to the surface? Impossible!

As they entered the library together, Miss Minerva returned to the
schoolroom. She had lingered on the upper landing, and had heard the
conversation between mother and son.




CHAPTER VII.

The library at Fairfield Gardens possessed two special attractions,
besides the books. It opened into a large conservatory; and it was
adorned by an admirable portrait of Mrs. Gallilee, painted by her
brother.

Waiting the appearance of the fair original, Mr. Mool looked at the
portrait, and then mentally reviewed the history of Mrs. Gallilee’s
family. What he did next, no person acquainted with the habits of
lawyers will be weak enough to believe. Mr. Mool blushed.

Is this the language of exaggeration, describing a human anomaly on the
roll of attorneys? The fact shall be left to answer the question. Mr.
Mool had made a mistake in his choice of a profession. The result of the
mistake was--a shy lawyer.

Attended by such circumstances as these, the history of the family
assumes, for the moment, a certain importance. It is connected with a
blushing attorney. It will explain what happened on the reading of the
Will. And it is sure beforehand of a favourable reception--for it is all
about money.


Old Robert Graywell began life as the son of a small farmer. He was
generally considered to be rather an eccentric man; but prospered,
nevertheless, as a merchant in the city of London. When he retired from
business, he possessed a house and estate in the country, and a handsome
fortune safely invested in the Funds.

His children were three in number:--his son Robert, and his daughters
Maria and Susan.

The death of his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, was the first
serious calamity of his life. He retired to his estate a soured and
broken man. Loving husbands are not always, as a necessary consequence,
tender fathers. Old Robert’s daughters afforded him no consolation on
their mother’s death. Their anxiety about their mourning dresses so
disgusted him that he kept out of their way. No extraordinary interest
was connected with their prospects in life: they would be married--and
there would be an end of them. As for the son, he had long since placed
himself beyond the narrow range of his father’s sympathies. In the first
place, his refusal to qualify himself for a mercantile career had made
it necessary to dispose of the business to strangers. In the second
place, young Robert Graywell proved--without any hereditary influence,
and in the face of the strongest discouragement--to be a born painter!
One of the greatest artists of that day saw the boy’s first efforts, and
pronounced judgment in these plain words: “What a pity he has not got
his bread to earn by his brush!”

On the death of old Robert, his daughters found themselves (to use their
own expression) reduced to a trumpery legacy of ten thousand pounds
each. Their brother inherited the estate, and the bulk of the
property--not because his father cared about founding a family, but
because the boy had always been his mother’s favourite.

The first of the three children to marry was the eldest sister.

Maria considered herself fortunate in captivating Mr. Vere--a man of
old family, with a high sense of what he owed to his name. He had a
sufficient income, and he wanted no more. His wife’s dowry was settled
on herself. When he died, he left her a life-interest in his property
amounting to six hundred a year. This, added to the annual proceeds
of her own little fortune, made an income of one thousand pounds. The
remainder of Mr. Vere’s property was left to his only surviving child,
Ovid.

With a thousand a year for herself, and with two thousand a year for her
son, on his coming of age, the widowed Maria might possibly have been
satisfied--but for the extraordinary presumption of her younger sister.

Susan, ranking second in age, ranked second also in beauty; and yet, in
the race for a husband, Susan won the prize!

Soon after her sister’s marriage, she made a conquest of a Scotch
nobleman, possessed of a palace in London, and a palace in Scotland, and
a rent-roll of forty thousand pounds. Maria, to use her own expression,
never recovered it. From the horrid day when Susan became Lady
Northlake, Maria became a serious woman. All her earthly interests
centred now in the cultivation of her intellect. She started on that
glorious career, which associated her with the march of science. In only
a year afterwards--as an example of the progress which a resolute woman
can make--she was familiar with zoophyte fossils, and had succeeded in
dissecting the nervous system of a bee.

Was there no counter-attraction in her married life?

Very little. Mr. Vere felt no sympathy with his wife’s scientific
pursuits.

On her husband’s death, did she find no consolation in her son? Let
her speak for herself. “My son fills my heart. But the school, the
university, and the hospital have all in turn taken his education out of
my hands. My mind must be filled, as well as my heart.” She seized her
exquisite instruments, and returned to the nervous system of the bee.

In course of time, Mr. John Gallilee--“drifting about,” as he said of
himself--drifted across the path of science.

The widowed Mrs. Vere (as exhibited in public) was still a fine woman.
Mr. Gallilee admired “that style”; and Mr. Gallilee had fifty thousand
pounds. Only a little more, to my lord and my lady, than one year’s
income. But, invested at four percent, it added an annual two thousand
pounds to Mrs. Vere’s annual one thousand. Result, three thousand a
year, encumbered with Mr. Gallilee. On reflection, Mrs. Vere
accepted the encumbrance--and reaped her reward. Susan was no longer
distinguished as the sister who had her dresses made in Paris; and Mrs.
Gallilee was not now subjected to the indignity of getting a lift in
Lady Northlake’s carriage.

What was the history of Robert, during this interval of time? In two
words, Robert disgraced himself.

Taking possession of his country house, the new squire was invited to
contribute towards the expense of a pack of hounds kept by subscription
in the neighbourhood, and was advised to make acquaintance with his
fellow-sportsmen by giving a hunt-breakfast. He answered very politely;
but the fact was not to be concealed--the new man refused to encourage
hunting: he thought that noble amusement stupid and cruel. For the same
reason, he refused to preserve game. A last mistake was left to make,
and he made it. After returning the rector’s visit, he failed to
appear at church. No person with the smallest knowledge of the English
character, as exhibited in an English county, will fail to foresee that
Robert’s residence on his estate was destined to come, sooner or later,
to an untimely end. When he had finished his sketches of the picturesque
aspects of his landed property, he disappeared. The estate was not
entailed. Old Robert--who had insisted on the minutest formalities
and details in providing for his dearly-loved wife--was impenetrably
careless about the future of his children. “My fortune has no value now
in my eyes,” he said to judicious friends; “let them run through it all,
if they please. It would do them a deal of good if they were obliged to
earn their own living, like better people than themselves.” Left free to
take his own way, Robert sold the estate merely to get rid of it. With
no expensive tastes, except the taste for buying pictures, he became a
richer man than ever.

When their brother next communicated with them, Lady Northlake and Mrs.
Gallilee heard of him as a voluntary exile in Italy. He was building a
studio and a gallery; he was contemplating a series of pictures; and he
was a happy man for the first time in his life.

Another interval passed--and the sisters heard of Robert again.

Having already outraged the sense of propriety among his English
neighbours, he now degraded himself in the estimation of his family,
by marrying a “model.” The letter announcing this event declared, with
perfect truth, that he had chosen a virtuous woman for his wife. She sat
to artists, as any lady might sit to any artist, “for the head only.”
 Her parents gained a bare subsistence by farming their own little morsel
of land; they were honest people--and what did brother Robert care for
rank? His own grandfather had been a farmer.

Lady Northlake and Mrs. Gallilee felt it due to themselves to hold a
consultation, on the subject of their sister-in-law. Was it desirable,
in their own social interests, to cast Robert off from that moment?

Susan (previously advised by her kind-hearted husband) leaned to the
side of mercy. Robert’s letter informed them that he proposed to live,
and die, in Italy. If he held to this resolution, his marriage would
surely be an endurable misfortune to his relatives in London. “Suppose
we write to him,” Susan concluded, “and say we are surprised, but
we have no doubt he knows best. We offer our congratulations to Mrs.
Robert, and our sincere wishes for his happiness.”

To Lady Northlake’s astonishment, Mrs. Gallilee adopted this indulgent
point of view, without a word of protest. She had her reasons--but they
were not producible to a relative whose husband had forty thousand a
year. Robert had paid her debts.

An income of three thousand pounds, even in these days, represents a
handsome competence--provided you don’t “owe a duty to society.” In
Mrs. Gallilee’s position, an income of three thousand pounds represented
genteel poverty. She was getting into debt again; and she was meditating
future designs on her brother’s purse. A charming letter to Robert
was the result. It ended with, “Do send me a photograph of your lovely
wife!” When the poor “model” died, not many years afterwards, leaving
one little daughter, Mrs. Gallilee implored her brother to return to
England. “Come, dearest Robert, and find consolation and a home, under
the roof of your affectionate Maria.”

But Robert remained in Italy, and was buried in Italy. At the date of
his death, he had three times paid his elder sister’s debts. On
every occasion when he helped her in this liberal way, she proved her
gratitude by anticipating a larger, and a larger, and a larger legacy if
she outlived him.

Knowing (as the family lawyer) what sums of money Mrs. Gallilee had
extracted from her brother, Mr. Mool also knew that the advances thus
made had been considered as representing the legacy, to which she might
otherwise have had some sisterly claim. It was his duty to have warned
her of this, when she questioned him generally on the subject of the
Will; and he had said nothing about it, acting under a most unbecoming
motive--in plain words, the motive of fear. From the self-reproachful
feeling that now disturbed him, had risen that wonderful blush which
made its appearance on Mr. Mool’s countenance. He was actually ashamed
of himself. After all, is it too much to have suggested that he was a
human anomaly on the roll of attorneys?




CHAPTER VIII.

Mrs. Gallilee made her appearance in the library--and Mr. Mool’s
pulse accelerated its beat. Mrs. Gallilee’s son followed her into the
room--and Mr. Mool’s pulse steadied itself again. By special arrangement
with the lawyer, Ovid had been always kept in ignorance of his mother’s
affairs. No matter how angry she might be in the course of the next few
minutes, she could hardly express her indignation in the presence of her
son.

Joyous anticipation has the happiest effect on female beauty. Mrs.
Gallilee looked remarkably well, that day. Having rather a round and
full face, she wore her hair (coloured from youthful nature) in a fringe
across her forehead, balanced on either side by clusters of charming
little curls. Her mourning for Robert was worthy of its Parisian origin;
it showed to perfect advantage the bloom of her complexion and the
whiteness of her neck--also worthy of their Parisian origin. She looked
like a portrait of the period of Charles the Second, endowed with life.

“And how do you do, Mr. Mool? Have you been looking at my ferns?”

The ferns were grouped at the entrance, leading from the library to the
conservatory. They had certainly not escaped the notice of the lawyer,
who possessed a hot-house of his own, and who was an enthusiast in
botany. It now occurred to him--if he innocently provoked embarrassing
results--that ferns might be turned to useful and harmless account as a
means of introducing a change of subject. “Even when she hasn’t spoken a
word,” thought Mr. Mool, consulting his recollections, “I have felt her
eyes go through me like a knife.”

“Spare us the technicalities, please,” Mrs. Gallilee continued, pointing
to the documents on the table. “I want to be exactly acquainted with the
duties I owe to Carmina. And, by the way, I naturally feel some interest
in knowing whether Lady Northlake has any place in the Will.”

Mrs. Gallilee never said “my sister,” never spoke in the family
circle of “Susan.” The inexhaustible sense of injury, aroused by that
magnificent marriage, asserted itself in keeping her sister at the full
distance implied by never forgetting her title.

“The first legacy mentioned in the Will,” said Mr. Mool, “is a legacy
to Lady Northlake.” Mrs. Gallilee’s face turned as hard as iron. “One
hundred pounds,” Mr. Mool continued, “to buy a mourning ring.”’ Mrs.
Gallilee’s eyes became eloquent in an instant, and said as if in words,
“Thank Heaven!”

“So like your uncle’s unpretending good sense,” she remarked to her son.
“Any other legacy to Lady Northlake would have been simply absurd. Yes,
Mr. Mool? Perhaps my name follows?”

Mr. Mool cast a side-look at the ferns. He afterwards described his
sensations as reminding him of previous experience in a dentist’s chair,
at the awful moment when the operator says “Let me look,” and has his
devilish instrument hidden in his hand. The “situation,” to use the
language of the stage, was indeed critical enough already. Ovid added to
the horror of it by making a feeble joke. “What will you take for your
chance, mother?”

Before bad became worse, Mr. Mool summoned the energy of despair. He
wisely read the exact words of the Will, this time: “‘And I give and
bequeath to my sister, Mrs. Maria Gallilee, one hundred pounds.”’

Ovid’s astonishment could only express itself in action. He started to
his feet.

Mr. Mool went on reading. “‘Free of legacy duty, to buy a mourning
ring--“’

“Impossible!” Ovid broke out.

Mr. Mool finished the sentence. “‘And my sister will understand the
motive which animates me in making this bequest.”’ He laid the Will on
the table, and ventured to look up. At the same time, Ovid turned to
his mother, struck by the words which had been just read, and eager to
inquire what their meaning might be.

Happily for themselves, the two men never knew what the preservation of
their tranquillity owed to that one moment of delay.

If they had looked at Mrs. Gallilee, when she was first aware of
her position in the Will, they might have seen the incarnate Devil
self-revealed in a human face. They might have read, in her eyes and on
her lips, a warning hardly less fearful than the unearthly writing on
the wall, which told the Eastern Monarch of his coming death. “See
this woman, and know what I can do with her, when she has repelled her
guardian angel, and her soul is left to ME.”

But the revelation showed itself, and vanished. Her face was composed
again, when her son and her lawyer looked at it. Her voice was under
control; her inbred capacity for deceit was ready for action. All those
formidable qualities in her nature, which a gentler and wiser training
than hers had been might have held in check--by development of
preservative influences that lay inert--were now driven back to their
lurking-place; leaving only the faintest traces of their momentary
appearance on the surface. Her breathing seemed to be oppressed; her
eyelids drooped heavily--and that was all.

“Is the room too hot for you?” Ovid asked.

It was a harmless question, but any question annoyed her at that moment.
“Nonsense!” she exclaimed irritably.

“The atmosphere of the conservatory is rich in reviving smells,” Mr.
Mool remarked. “Do I detect, among the delightful perfumes which reach
us, the fragrant root-stock of the American fern? If I am wrong, Mrs.
Gallilee, may I send you some of the sweet-smelling Maidenhair from my
own little hot-house?” He smiled persuasively. The ferns were already
justifying his confidence in their peace-making virtues, turned
discreetly to account. Those terrible eyes rested on him mercifully.
Not even a covert allusion to his silence in the matter of the legacy
escaped her. Did the lawyer’s artlessly abrupt attempt to change the
subject warn her to be on her guard? In any case, she thanked him with
the readiest courtesy for his kind offer. Might she trouble him in the
meantime to let her see the Will?

She read attentively the concluding words of the clause in which her
name appeared--“My sister will understand the motive which animates
me in making this bequest”--and then handed back the Will to Mr.
Mool. Before Ovid could ask for it, she was ready with a plausible
explanation. “When your uncle became a husband and a father,” she said,
“those claims on him were paramount. He knew that a token of remembrance
(the smaller the better) was all I could accept, if I happened to
outlive him. Please go on, Mr. Mool.”

In one respect, Ovid resembled his late uncle. They both belonged to
that high-minded order of men, who are slow to suspect, and therefore
easy to deceive. Ovid tenderly took his mother’s hand.

“I ought to have known it,” he said, “without obliging you to tell me.”

Mrs. Gallilee did _not_ blush. Mr. Mool did.

“Go on!” Mrs. Gallilee repeated. Mr. Mool looked at Ovid. “The next
name, Mr. Vere, is yours.”

“Does my uncle remember me as he has remembered my mother?” asked Ovid.

“Yes, sir--and let me tell you, a very pretty compliment is attached to
the bequest. ‘It is needless’ (your late uncle says) ‘to leave any more
important proof of remembrance to my nephew. His father has already
provided for him; and, with his rare abilities, he will make a second
fortune by the exercise of his profession.’ Most gratifying, Mrs.
Gallilee, is it nor? The next clause provides for the good old
housekeeper Teresa, and for her husband if he survives her, in the
following terms--”

Mrs. Gallilee was becoming impatient to hear more of herself. “We may, I
think, pass over that,” she suggested, “and get to the part of it
which relates to Carmina and me. Don’t think I am impatient; I am only
desirous--”

The growling of a dog in the conservatory interrupted her. “That
tiresome creature!” she said sharply; “I shall be obliged to get rid of
him!”

Mr. Mool volunteered to drive the dog out of the conservatory. Mrs.
Gallilee, as irritable as ever, stopped him at the door.

“Don’t, Mr. Mool! That dog’s temper is not to be trusted. He shows it
with Miss Minerva, my governess--growls just in that way whenever he
sees her. I dare say he smells you. There! Now he barks! You are only
making him worse. Come back!”

Being at the door, gentle Mr. Mool tried the ferns as peace-makers once
more. He gathered a leaf, and returned to his place in a state of meek
admiration. “The flowering fern!” he said softly.

“A really fine specimen, Mrs. Gallilee, of the Osmunda Regalis. What
a world of beauty in this bipinnate frond! One hardly knows where the
stalk ends and the leaf begins!”

The dog, a bright little terrier, came trotting into the library He
saluted the company briskly with his tail, not excepting Mr. Mool. No
growl, or approach to a growl, now escaped him. The manner in which
he laid himself down at Mrs. Gallilee’s feet completely refuted her
aspersion on his temper. Ovid suggested that he might have been provoked
by a cat in the conservatory.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mool turned over a page of the Will, and arrived at the
clauses relating to Carmina and her guardian.

“It may not be amiss,” he began, “to mention, in the first place, that
the fortune left to Miss Carmina amounts, in round numbers, to one
hundred and thirty thousand pounds. The Trustees--”

“Skip the Trustees,” said Mrs. Gallilee.

Mr. Mool skipped.

“In the matter of the guardian,” he said, “there is a preliminary
clause, in the event of your death or refusal to act, appointing Lady
Northlake--”

“Skip Lady Northlake,” said Mrs. Gallilee.

Mr. Mool skipped.

“You are appointed Miss Carmina’s guardian, until she comes of age,” he
resumed. “If she marries in that interval--”

He paused to turn over a page. Not only Mrs. Gallilee, but Ovid also,
now listened with the deepest interest.

“If she marries in that interval, with her guardian’s approval--”

“Suppose I don’t approve of her choice?” Mrs. Gallilee interposed.

Ovid looked at his mother--and quickly looked away again. The restless
little terrier caught his eye, and jumped up to be patted. Ovid was
too pre-occupied to notice this modest advance. The dog’s eyes and ears
expressed reproachful surprise. His friend Ovid had treated him rudely
for the first time in his life.

“If the young lady contracts a matrimonial engagement of which you
disapprove,” Mr. Mool answered, “you are instructed by the testator to
assert your reasons in the presence of--well, I may describe it, as
a family council; composed of Mr. Gallilee, and of Lord and Lady
Northlake.”

“Excessively foolish of Robert,” Mrs. Gallilee remarked. “And what, Mr.
Mool, is this meddling council of three to do?”

“A majority of the council, Mrs. Gallilee, is to decide the question
absolutely. If the decision confirms your view, and if Miss Carmina
still persists in her resolution notwithstanding--”

“Am I to give way?” Mrs. Gallilee asked.

“Not until your niece comes of age, ma’am. Then, she decides for
herself.”

“And inherits the fortune?”

“Only an income from part of it--if her marriage is disapproved by her
guardian and her relatives.”

“And what becomes of the rest?”

“The whole of it,” said Mr. Mool, “will be invested by the Trustees, and
will be divided equally, on her death, among her children.”

“Suppose she leaves no children?”

“That case is provided for, ma’am, by the last clause. I will only say
now, that you are interested in the result.”

Mrs. Gallilee turned swiftly and sternly to her son. “When I am dead and
gone,” she said, “I look to you to defend my memory.”

“To defend your memory?” Ovid repeated, wondering what she could
possibly mean.

“If I do become interested in the disposal of Robert’s fortune--which
God forbid!--can’t you foresee what will happen?” his mother inquired
bitterly. “Lady Northlake will say, ‘Maria intrigued for this!’”

Mr. Mool looked doubtfully at the ferns. No! His vegetable allies were
not strong enough to check any further outpouring of such family feeling
as this. Nothing was to be trusted, in the present emergency, but the
superior authority of the Will.

“Pardon me,” he said; “there are some further instructions, Mrs.
Gallilee, which, as I venture to think, exhibit your late brother’s
well-known liberality of feeling in a very interesting light. They
relate to the provision made for his daughter, while she is residing
under your roof. Miss Carmina is to have the services of the best
masters, in finishing her education.”

“Certainly!” cried Mrs. Gallilee, with the utmost fervour.

“And the use of a carriage to herself, whenever she may require it.”

“No, Mr. Mool! _Two_ carriages--in such a climate as this. One open, and
one closed.”

“And to defray these and other expenses, the Trustees are authorized to
place at your disposal one thousand a year.”

“Too much! too much!”

Mr. Mool might have agreed with her--if he had nor known that Robert
Graywell had thought of his sister’s interests, in making this excessive
provision for expenses incurred on his daughter’s account.

“Perhaps, her dresses and her pocket money are included?” Mrs. Gallilee
resumed.

Mr. Mool smiled, and shook his head. “Mr. Graywell’s generosity has no
limits,” he said, “where his daughter is concerned. Miss Carmina is to
have five hundred a year for pocket-money and dresses.”

Mrs. Gallilee appealed to the sympathies of her son. “Isn’t it
touching?” she said. “Dear Carmina! my own people in Paris shall make
her dresses. Well, Mr. Mool?”

“Allow me to read the exact language of the Will next,” Mr. Mool
answered. “‘If her sweet disposition leads her into exceeding her
allowance, in the pursuit of her own little charities, my Trustees are
hereby authorized, at their own discretion, to increase the amount,
within the limit of another five hundred pounds annually.’ It sounds
presumptuous, perhaps, on my part,” said Mr. Mool, venturing on a modest
confession of enthusiasm, “but one can’t help thinking, What a good
father! what a good child!”

Mrs. Gallilee had another appropriate remark ready on her lips, when the
unlucky dog interrupted her once more. He made a sudden rush into the
conservatory, barking with all his might. A crashing noise followed the
dog’s outbreak, which sounded like the fall of a flower-pot.

Ovid hurried into the conservatory--with the dog ahead of him, tearing
down the steps which led into the back garden.

The pot lay broken on the tiled floor. Struck by the beauty of the
flower that grew in it, he stooped to set it up again. If, instead of
doing this, he had advanced at once to the second door, he would have
seen a lady hastening into the house; and, though her back view only was
presented, he could hardly have failed to recognize Miss Minerva. As it
was, when he reached the door, the garden was empty.

He looked up at the house, and saw Carmina at the open window of her
bedroom.

The sad expression on that sweet young face grieved him. Was she
thinking of her happy past life? or of the doubtful future, among
strangers in a strange country? She noticed Ovid--and her eyes
brightened. His customary coldness with women melted instantly: he
kissed his hand to her. She returned the salute (so familiar to her
in Italy) with her gentle smile, and looked back into the room. Teresa
showed herself at the window. Always following her impulses without
troubling herself to think first, the duenna followed them now. “We are
dull up here,” she called out. “Come back to us, Mr. Ovid.” The words
had hardly been spoken before they both turned from the window. Teresa
pointed significantly into the room. They disappeared.

Ovid went back to the library.

“Anybody listening?” Mr. Mool inquired.

“I have not discovered anybody, but I doubt if a stray cat could have
upset that heavy flower-pot.” He looked round him as he made the reply.
“Where is my mother?” he asked.

Mrs. Gallilee had gone upstairs, eager to tell Carmina of the handsome
allowance made to her by her father. Having answered in these terms, Mr.
Mool began to fold up the Will--and suddenly stopped.

“Very inconsiderate, on my part,” he said; “I forgot, Mr. Ovid, that you
haven’t heard the end of it. Let me give you a brief abstract. You
know, perhaps, that Miss Carmina is a Catholic? Very natural--her poor
mother’s religion. Well, sir, her good father forgets nothing. All
attempts at proselytizing are strictly forbidden.”

Ovid smiled. His mother’s religious convictions began and ended with the
inorganic matter of the earth.

“The last clause,” Mr. Mool proceeded, “seemed to agitate Mrs. Gallilee
quite painfully. I reminded her that her brother had no near relations
living, but Lady Northlake and herself. As to leaving money to my lady,
in my lord’s princely position--”

“Pardon me,” Ovid interposed, “what is there to agitate my mother in
this?”

Mr. Mool made his apologies for not getting sooner to the point, with
the readiest good-will. “Professional habit, Mr. Ovid,” he explained.
“We are apt to be wordy--paid, in fact, at so much a folio, for so many
words!--and we like to clear the ground first. Your late uncle ends
his Will, by providing for the disposal of his fortune, in two possible
events, as follows: Miss Carmina may die unmarried, or Miss Carmina
(being married) may die without offspring.”

Seeing the importance of the last clause now, Ovid stopped him again.
“Do I remember the amount of the fortune correctly?” he asked. “Was it a
hundred and thirty thousand pounds?”

“Yes.”

“And what becomes of all that money, if Carmina never marries, or if she
leaves no children?”

“In either of those cases, sir, the whole of the money goes to Mrs.
Gallilee and her daughters.”’




CHAPTER IX.

Time had advanced to midnight, after the reading of the Will--and Ovid
was at home.

The silence of the quiet street in which he lived was only disturbed by
the occasional rolling of carriage wheels, and by dance-music from the
house of one of his neighbours who was giving a ball. He sat at his
writing-table, thinking. Honest self-examination had laid out the
state of his mind before him like a map, and had shown him, in its true
proportions, the new interest that filled his life.

Of that interest he was now the willing slave. If he had not known
his mother to be with her, he would have gone back to Carmina when
the lawyer left the house. As it was, he had sent a message upstairs,
inviting himself to dinner, solely for the purpose of seeing Carmina
again--and he had been bitterly disappointed when he heard that Mr. and
Mrs. Gallilee were engaged, and that his cousin would take tea in her
room. He had eaten something at this club, without caring what it was.
He had gone to the Opera afterwards, merely because his recollections of
a favourite singing-lady of that season vaguely reminded him of Carmina.
And there he was, at midnight, on his return from the music, eager for
the next opportunity of seeing his cousin, a few hours hence--when he
had arranged to say good-bye at the family breakfast-table.

To feel this change in him as vividly as he felt it, could lead to
but one conclusion in the mind of a man who was incapable of purposely
deceiving himself. He was as certain as ever of the importance of rest
and change, in the broken state of his health. And yet, in the face of
that conviction, his contemplated sea-voyage had already become one of
the vanished illusions of his life!

His friend had arranged to travel with him, that morning, from London
to the port at which the yacht was waiting for them. They were hardly
intimate enough to trust each other unreservedly with secrets. The
customary apology for breaking an engagement was the alternative that
remained. With the paper on his desk and with the words on his mind, he
was yet in such a strange state of indecision that he hesitated to write
the letter!

His morbidly-sensitive nerves were sadly shaken. Even the familiar
record of the half-hour by the hall clock startled him. The stroke
of the bell was succeeded by a mild and mournful sound outside the
door--the mewing of a cat.

He rose, without any appearance of surprise, and opened the door.

With grace and dignity entered a small black female cat; exhibiting, by
way of variety of colour, a melancholy triangular patch of white over
the lower part of her face, and four brilliantly clean white paws. Ovid
went back to his desk. As soon as he was in his chair again, the cat
jumped on his shoulder, and sat there purring in his ear. This was the
place she occupied, whenever her master was writing alone. Passing one
day through a suburban neighbourhood, on his round of visits, the young
surgeon had been attracted by a crowd in a by-street. He had rescued his
present companion from starvation in a locked-up house, the barbarous
inhabitants of which had gone away for a holiday, and had forgotten the
cat. When Ovid took the poor creature home with him in his carriage,
popular feeling decided that the unknown gentleman was “a rum ‘un.” From
that moment, this fortunate little member of a brutally-slandered race
attached herself to her new friend, and to that friend only. If Ovid had
owned the truth, he must have acknowledged that her company was a relief
to him, in the present state of his mind.

When a man’s flagging purpose is in want of a stimulant, the most
trifling change in the circumstances of the moment often applies the
animating influence. Even such a small interruption as the appearance of
his cat rendered this service to Ovid. To use the common and expressive
phrase, it had “shaken him up.” He wrote the letter--and his patient
companion killed the time by washing her face.

His mind being so far relieved, he went to bed--the cat following him
upstairs to her bed in a corner of the room. Clothes are unwholesome
superfluities not contemplated in the system of Nature. When we are
exhausted, there is no such thing as true repose for us until we are
freed from our dress. Men subjected to any excessive exertion--fighting,
rowing, walking, working--must strip their bodies as completely as
possible, or they are nor equal to the call on them. Ovid’s knowledge
of his own temperament told him that sleep was not to be hoped for,
that night. But the way to bed was the way to rest notwithstanding, by
getting rid of his clothes.

With the sunrise he rose and went out.

He took his letter with him, and dropped it into the box in his friend’s
door. The sooner he committed himself to the new course that he had
taken, the more certain he might feel of not renewing the miserable and
useless indecision of the past night. “Thank God, that’s done!” he
said to himself, as he heard the letter fall into the box, and left the
house.

After walking in the Park until he was weary, he sat down by the
ornamental lake, and watched the waterfowl enjoying their happy lives.

Wherever he went, whatever he did, Carmina was always with him. He
had seen thousands of girls, whose personal attractions were far more
remarkable--and some few among them whose manner was perhaps equally
winning. What was the charm in the little half-foreign cousin that had
seized on him in an instant, and that seemed to fasten its subtle hold
more and more irresistibly with every minute of his life? He was content
to feel the charm without caring to fathom it. The lovely morning light
took him in imagination to her bedside; he saw here sleeping peacefully
in her new room. Would the time come when she might dream of him?
He looked at his watch. It was seven o’clock. The breakfast-hour at
Fairfield Gardens had been fixed for eight, to give him time to catch
the morning train. Half an hour might be occupied in walking back to
his own house. Add ten minutes to make some change in his dress--and
he might set forth for his next meeting with Carmina. No uneasy
anticipation of what the family circle might think of his sudden change
of plan troubled his mind. A very different question occupied him. For
the first time in his life, he wondered what dress a woman would wear at
breakfast time.

He opened his house door with his own key. An elderly person, in a
coarse black gown, was seated on the bench in the hall. She rose,
and advanced towards him. In speechless astonishment, he confronted
Carmina’s faithful companion--Teresa.

“If you please, I want to speak to you,” she said, in her best English.
Ovid took her into his consulting-room. She wasted no time in apologies
or explanations. “Don’t speak!” she broke out. “Carmina has had a bad
night.”

“I shall be at the house in half an hour!” Ovid eagerly assured her.

The duenna shook her forefinger impatiently. “She doesn’t want a doctor.
She wants a friend, when I am gone. What is her life here? A new life,
among new people. Don’t speak! She’s frightened and miserable. So young,
so shy, so easily startled. And I must leave her--I must! I must! My old
man is failing fast; he may die, without a creature to comfort him, if
I don’t go back. I could tear my hair when I think of it. Don’t speak!
It’s _my_ business to speak. Ha! I know, what I know. Young doctor,
you’re in love with Carmina! I’ve read you like a book. You’re quick to
see, sudden to feel--like one of my people. _Be_ one of my people. Help
me.”

She dragged a chair close to Ovid, and laid her hand suddenly and
heavily on his arm.

“It’s not my fault, mind; _I_ have said nothing to disturb her. No! I’ve
made the best of it. I’ve lied to her. What do I care? I would lie like
Judas Iscariot himself to spare Carmina a moment’s pain. It’s such a
new life for her--try to see it for yourself--such a new life. You and I
shook hands yesterday. Do it again. Are you surprised to see me? I asked
your mother’s servants where you lived; and here I am--with the cruel
teeth of anxiety gnawing me alive when I think of the time to come. Oh,
my lamb! my angel! she’s alone. Oh, my God, only seventeen years old,
and alone in the world! No father, no mother; and soon--oh, too soon,
too soon--not even Teresa! What are you looking at? What is there so
wonderful in the tears of a stupid old fool? Drops of hot water. Ha! ha!
if they fall on your fine carpet here, they won’t hurt it. You’re a good
fellow; you’re a dear fellow. Hush! I know the Evil Eye when I see
it. No more of that! A secret in your ear--I’ve said a word for you
to Carmina already. Give her time; she’s not cold; young and innocent,
that’s all. Love will come--I know, what I know--love will come.”

She laughed--and, in the very act of laughing, changed again. Fright
looked wildly at Ovid out of her staring eyes. Some terrifying
remembrance had suddenly occurred to her. She sprang to her feet.

“You said you were going away,” she cried. “You said it, when you left
us yesterday. It can’t be! it shan’t be! You’re not going to leave
Carmina, too?”

Ovid’s first impulse was to tell the whole truth. He resisted the
impulse. To own that Carmina was the cause of his abandonment of the
sea-voyage, before she was even sure of the impression she had
produced on him, would be to place himself in a position from which
his self-respect recoiled. “My plans are changed,” was all he said to
Teresa. “Make your mind easy; I’m not going away.”

The strange old creature snapped her fingers joyously. “Good-bye! I
want no more of you.” With those cool and candid words of farewell, she
advanced to the door--stopped suddenly to think--and came back. Only a
moment had passed, and she was as sternly in earnest again as ever.

“May I call you by your name?” she asked.

“Certainly!”

“Listen, Ovid! I may not see you again before I go back to my husband.
This is my last word--never forget it. Even Carmina may have enemies!”

What could she be thinking of? “Enemies--in my mother’s house!” Ovid
exclaimed. “What can you possibly mean?”

Teresa returned to the door, and only answered him when she had opened
it to go.

“The Evil Eye never lies,” she said. “Wait--and you will see.”




CHAPTER X.

Mrs. Gallilee was on her way to the breakfast-room, when her son entered
the house. They met in the hall. “Is your packing done?” she asked.

He was in no humour to wait, and make his confession at that moment.
“Not yet,” was his only reply.

Mrs. Gallilee led the way into the room. “Ovid’s luggage is not ready
yet,” she announced; “I believe he will lose his train.”

They were all at the breakfast table, the children and the governess
included. Carmina’s worn face, telling its tale of a wakeful night,
brightened again, as it had brightened at the bedroom window, when she
saw Ovid. She took his hand frankly, and made light of her weary looks.
“No, my cousin,” she said, playfully; “I mean to be worthier of my
pretty bed to-night; I am not going to be your patient yet.” Mr.
Gallilee (with this mouth full at the moment) offered good advice. “Eat
and drink as I do, my dear,” he said to Carmina; “and you will sleep as
I do. Off I go when the light’s out--flat on my back, as Mrs. Gallilee
will tell you--and wake me if you can, till it’s time to get up. Have
some buttered eggs, Ovid. They’re good, ain’t they, Zo?” Zo looked
up from her plate, and agreed with her father, in one emphatic word,
“Jolly!” Miss Minerva, queen of governesses, instantly did her duty.
“Zoe! how often must I tell you not to talk slang? Do you ever hear
your sister say ‘Jolly?’” That highly-cultivated child, Maria, strong
in conscious virtue, added her authority in support of the protest.
“No young lady who respects herself, Zoe, will ever talk slang.” Mr.
Gallilee was unworthy of such a daughter. He muttered under his
breath, “Oh, bother!” Zo held out her plate for more. Mr. Gallilee was
delighted. “My child all over!” he exclaimed. “We are both of us good
feeders. Zo will grow up a fine woman.” He appealed to his stepson to
agree with him. “That’s your medical opinion, Ovid, isn’t it?”

Carmina’s pretty smile passed like rippling light over her eyes and
her lips. In her brief experience of England, Mr. Gallilee was the one
exhilarating element in family life.

Mrs. Gallilee’s mind still dwelt on her son’s luggage, and on the
rigorous punctuality of railway arrangements.

“What is your servant about?” she said to Ovid. “It’s his business to
see that you are ready in time.”

It was useless to allow the false impression that prevailed to continue
any longer. Ovid set them all right, in the plainest and fewest words.

“My servant is not to blame,” he said. “I have written an apology to my
friend--I am not going away.”

For the moment, this astounding announcement was received in silent
dismay--excepting the youngest member of the company. After her father,
Ovid was the one other person in the world who held a place in Zo’s odd
little heart. Her sentiments were now expressed without hesitation
and without reserve. She put down her spoon, and she cried, “Hooray!”
 Another exhibition of vulgarity. But even Miss Minerva was too
completely preoccupied by the revelation which had burst on the family
to administer the necessary reproof. Her eager eyes were riveted on
Ovid. As for Mr. Gallilee, he held his bread and butter suspended
in mid-air, and stared open-mouthed at his stepson, in helpless
consternation.

Mrs. Gallilee always set the right example. Mrs. Gallilee was the first
to demand an explanation.

“What does this extraordinary proceeding mean?” she asked.

Ovid was impenetrable to the tone in which that question was put. He had
looked at his cousin, when he declared his change of plan--and he was
looking at her still. Whatever the feeling of the moment might be,
Carmina’s sensitive face expressed it vividly. Who could mistake the
faintly-rising colour in her cheeks, the sweet quickening of light in
her eyes, when she met Ovid’s look? Still hardly capable of estimating
the influence that she exercised over him, her sense of the interest
taken in her by Ovid was the proud sense that makes girls innocently
bold. Whatever the others might think of his broken engagement, her
artless eyes said plainly, “My feeling is happy surprise.”

Mrs. Gallilee summoned her son to attend her, in no friendly voice.
She, too, had looked at Carmina--and had registered the result of her
observation privately.

“Are we to hear your reasons?” she inquired.

Ovid had made the one discovery in the world, on which his whole heart
was set. He was so happy, that he kept his mother out of his secret,
with a masterly composure worthy of herself.

“I don’t think a sea-voyage is the right thing for me,” he answered.

“Rather a sudden change of opinion,” Mrs. Gallilee remarked.

Ovid coolly agreed with her. It _was_ rather sudden, he said.

The governess still looked at him, wondering whether he would provoke an
outbreak.

After a little pause, Mrs. Gallilee accepted her son’s short
answer--with a sudden submission which had a meaning of its own. She
offered Ovid another cup of tea; and, more remarkable yet, she turned
to her eldest daughter, and deliberately changed the subject. “What are
your lessons, my dear, to-day?” she asked, with bland maternal interest.

By this time, bewildered Mr. Gallilee had finished his bread and
butter. “Ovid knows best, my dear,” he said cheerfully to his wife. Mrs.
Gallilee’s sudden recovery of her temper did not include her husband.
If a look could have annihilated that worthy man, his corporal presence
must have vanished into air, when he had delivered himself of his
opinion. As it was, he only helped Zo to another spoonful of jam. “When
Ovid first thought of that voyage,” he went on, “I said, Suppose he’s
sick? A dreadful sensation isn’t it, Miss Minerva? First you seem to
sink into your shoes, and then it all comes up--eh? You’re _not_ sick
at sea? I congratulate you! I most sincerely congratulate you! My dear
Ovid, come and dine with me to-night at the club.” He looked doubtfully
at his wife, as he made that proposal. “Got the headache, my dear? I’ll
take you out with pleasure for a walk. What’s the matter with her, Miss
Minerva? Oh, I see! Hush! Maria’s going to say grace.--Amen! Amen!”

They all rose from the table.

Mr. Gallilee was the first to open the door. The smoking-room at
Fairfield Gardens was over the kitchen; he preferred enjoying his cigar
in the garden of the Square. He looked at Carmina and Ovid, as if he
wanted one of them to accompany him. They were both at the aviary,
admiring the birds, and absorbed in their own talk. Mr. Gallilee
resigned himself to his fate; appealing, on his way out, to somebody to
agree with him as usual. “Well!” he said with a little sigh, “a cigar
keeps one company.” Miss Minerva (absorbed in her own thoughts) passed
near him, on her way to the school-room with her pupils. “You would find
it so yourself, Miss Minerva--that is to say, if you smoked, which of
course you don’t. Be a good girl, Zo; attend to your lessons.”

Zo’s perversity in the matter of lessons put its own crooked
construction on this excellent advice. She answered in a whisper, “Give
us a holiday.”

The passing aspirations of idle minds, being subject to the law of
chances, are sometimes fulfilled, and so exhibit poor human wishes in a
consolatory light. Thanks to the conversation between Carmina and Ovid,
Zo got her holiday after all.


Mrs. Gallilee, still as amiable as ever, had joined her son and her
niece at the aviary. Ovid said to his mother, “Carmina is fond of birds.
I have been telling her she may see all the races of birds assembled in
the Zoological Gardens. It’s a perfect day. Why shouldn’t we go!”

The stupidest woman living would have understood what this proposal
really meant. Mrs. Gallilee sanctioned it as composedly as if Ovid and
Carmina had been brother and sister. “I wish I could go with you,” she
said, “but my household affairs fill my morning. And there is a lecture
this afternoon, which I cannot possibly lose. I don’t know, Carmina,
whether you are interested in these things. We are to have the
apparatus, which illustrates the conversion of radiant energy into
sonorous vibrations. Have you ever heard, my dear, of the Diathermancy
of Ebonite? Not in your way, perhaps?”

Carmina looked as unintelligent as Zo herself. Mrs. Gallilee’s
science seemed to frighten her. The Diathermancy of Ebonite, by some
incomprehensible process, drove her bewildered mind back on her old
companion. “I want to give Teresa a little pleasure before we part,” she
said timidly; “may she go with us?”

“Of course!” cried Mrs. Gallilee. “And, now I think of it, why shouldn’t
the children have a little pleasure too? I will give them a holiday.
Don’t be alarmed, Ovid; Miss Minerva will look after them. In the
meantime, Carmina, tell your good old friend to get ready.”

Carmina hastened away, and so helped Mrs. Gallilee to the immediate
object which she had in view--a private interview with her son.

Ovid anticipated a searching inquiry into the motives which had led
him to give up the sea voyage. His mother was far too clever a woman to
waste her time in that way. Her first words told him that his motive was
as plainly revealed to her as the sunlight shining in at the window.

“That’s a charming girl,” she said, when Carmina closed the door behind
her. “Modest and natural--quite the sort of girl, Ovid, to attract a
clever man like you.”

Ovid was completely taken by surprise, and owned it by his silence. Mrs.
Gallilee went on in a tone of innocent maternal pleasantry.

“You know you began young,” she said; “your first love was that poor
little wizen girl of Lady Northlake’s who died. Child’s play, you will
tell me, and nothing more. But, my dear, I am afraid I shall require
some persuasion, before I quite sympathize with this new--what shall I
call it?--infatuation is too hard a word, and ‘fancy’ means nothing. We
will leave it a blank. Marriages of cousins are debatable marriages,
to say the least of them; and Protestant fathers and Papist mothers do
occasionally involve difficulties with children. Not that I say, No. Far
from it. But if this is to go on, I do hesitate.”

Something in his mother’s tone grated on Ovid’s sensibilities. “I don’t
at all follow you,” he said, rather sharply; “you are looking a little
too far into the future.”

“Then we will return to the present,” Mrs. Gallilee replied--still with
the readiest submission to the humour of her son.

On recent occasions, she had expressed the opinion that Ovid would do
wisely--at his age, and with his professional prospects--to wait a few
years before he thought of marrying. Having said enough in praise of her
niece to satisfy him for the time being (without appearing to be meanly
influenced, in modifying her opinion, by the question of money), her
next object was to induce him to leave England immediately, for the
recovery of his health. With Ovid absent, and with Carmina under her
sole superintendence, Mrs. Gallilee could see her way to her own private
ends.

“Really,” she resumed, “you ought to think seriously of change of air
and scene. You know you would not allow a patient, in your present state
of health, to trifle with himself as your are trifling now. If you don’t
like the sea, try the Continent. Get away somewhere, my dear, for your
own sake.”

It was only possible to answer this, in one way. Ovid owned that his
mother was right and asked for time to think. To his infinite relief,
he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Miss Minerva entered the
room--not in a very amiable temper, judging by appearances.

“I am afraid I disturb you,” she began.

Ovid seized the opportunity of retreat. He had some letters to write--he
hurried away to the library.

“Is there any mistake?” the governess asked, when she and Mrs. Gallilee
were alone.

“In what respect, Miss Minerva?”

“I met your niece, ma’am, on the stairs. She says you wish the children
to have a holiday.”

“Yes, to go with my son and Miss Carmina to the Zoological Gardens.”

“Miss Carmina said I was to go too.”

“Miss Carmina was perfectly right.”

The governess fixed her searching eyes on Mrs. Gallilee. “You really
wish me to go with them?” she said.

“I do.”

“I know why.”

In the course of their experience, Mrs. Gallilee and Miss Minerva had
once quarrelled fiercely--and Mrs. Gallilee had got the worst of it.
She learnt her lesson. For the future she knew how to deal with her
governess. When one said, “I know why,” the other only answered, “Do
you?”

“Let’s have it out plainly, ma’am,” Miss Minerva proceeded. “I am not
to let Mr. Ovid” (she laid a bitterly strong emphasis on the name, and
flushed angrily)--“I am not to let Mr. Ovid and Miss Carmina be alone
together.”

“You are a good guesser,” Mrs. Gallilee remarked quietly.

“No,” said Miss Minerva more quietly still; “I have only seen what you
have seen.”

“Did I tell you what I have seen?”

“Quite needless, ma’am. Your son is in love with his cousin. When am I
to be ready?”

The bland mistress mentioned the hour. The rude governess left the room.

Mrs. Gallilee looked at the closing door with a curious smile. She had
already suspected Miss Minerva of being crossed in love. The suspicion
was now confirmed, and the man was discovered.

“Soured by a hopeless passion,” she said to herself. “And the object
is--my son.”




CHAPTER XI.

On entering the Zoological Gardens, Ovid turned at once to the right,
leading Carmina to the aviaries, so that she might begin by seeing the
birds. Miss Minerva, with Maria in dutiful attendance, followed them.
Teresa kept at a little distance behind; and Zo took her own erratic
course, now attaching herself to one member of the little party, and now
to another.

When they reached the aviaries the order of march became confused;
differences in the birds made their appeal to differences in the
taste of the visitors. Insatiably eager for useful information, that
prize-pupil Maria held her governess captive at one cage; while Zo
darted away towards another, out of reach of discipline, and good Teresa
volunteered to bring her back. For a minute, Ovid and his cousin were
left alone. He might have taken a lover’s advantage even of that small
opportunity. But Carmina had something to say to him--and Carmina spoke
first.

“Has Miss Minerva been your mother’s governess for a long time?” she
inquired.

“For some years,” Ovid replied. “Will you let me put a question on my
side? Why do you ask?”

Carmina hesitated--and answered in a whisper, “She looks ill-tempered.”

“She _is_ ill-tempered,” Ovid confessed. “I suspect,” he added with a
smile, “you don’t like Miss Minerva.”

Carmina attempted no denial; her excuse was a woman’s excuse all over:
“She doesn’t like _me.”_

“How do you know?”

“I have been looking at her. Does she beat the children?”

“My dear Carmina! do you think she would be my mother’s governess if she
treated the children in that way? Besides, Miss Minerva is too well-bred
a woman to degrade herself by acts of violence. Family misfortunes have
very materially lowered her position in the world.”

He was reminded, as he said those words, of the time when Miss Minerva
had entered on her present employment, and when she had been the object
of some little curiosity on his own part. Mrs. Gallilee’s answer, when
he once asked why she kept such an irritable woman in the house, had
been entirely satisfactory, so far as she herself was concerned: “Miss
Minerva is remarkably well informed, and I get her cheap.” Exactly
like his mother! But it left Miss Minerva’s motives involved in utter
obscurity. Why had this highly cultivated woman accepted an inadequate
reward for her services, for years together? Why--to take the event of
that morning as another example--after plainly showing her temper to her
employer, had she been so ready to submit to a suddenly decreed holiday,
which disarranged her whole course of lessons for the week? Little
did Ovid think that the one reconciling influence which adjusted these
contradictions, and set at rest every doubt that grew out of them, was
to be found in himself. Even the humiliation of watching him in his
mother’s interest, and of witnessing his devotion to another woman,
was a sacrifice which Miss Minerva could endure for the one inestimable
privilege of being in Ovid’s company.

Before Carmina could ask any more questions a shrill voice, at its
highest pitch of excitement, called her away. Zo had just discovered
the most amusing bird in the Gardens--the low comedian of the feathered
race--otherwise known as the Piping Crow.

Carmina hurried to the cage as if she had been a child herself. Seeing
Ovid left alone, the governess seized _her_ chance of speaking to him.
The first words that passed her lips told their own story. While Carmina
had been studying Miss Minerva, Miss Minerva had been studying Carmina.
Already, the same instinctive sense of rivalry had associated, on
a common ground of feeling, the two most dissimilar women that ever
breathed the breath of life.

“Does your cousin know much about birds?” Miss Minerva began.

The opinion which declares that vanity is a failing peculiar to the sex
is a slander on women. All the world over, there are more vain men in it
than vain women. If Ovid had not been one of the exceptions to a general
rule among men, or even if his experience of the natures of women had
been a little less limited, he too might have discovered Miss Minerva’s
secret. Even her capacity for self-control failed, at the moment when
she took Carmina’s place. Those keen black eyes, so hard and cold
when they looked at anyone else--flamed with an all-devouring sense of
possession when they first rested on Ovid. “He’s mine. For one golden
moment he’s mine!” They spoke--and, suddenly, the every-day blind
was drawn down again; there was nobody present but a well-bred woman,
talking with delicately implied deference to a distinguished man.

“So far, we have not spoken of the birds,” Ovid innocently answered.

“And yet you seemed to be both looking at them!” She at once covered
this unwary outbreak of jealousy under an impervious surface of
compliment. “Miss Carmina is not perhaps exactly pretty, but she is a
singularly interesting girl.”

Ovid cordially (too cordially) agreed. Miss Minerva had presented
her better self to him under a most agreeable aspect. She
tried--struggled--fought with herself--to preserve appearances. The
demon in her got possession again of her tongue. “Do you find the young
lady intelligent?” she inquired.

“Certainly!”

Only one word--spoken perhaps a little sharply. The miserable woman
shrank under it. “An idle question on my part,” she said, with the
pathetic humility that tries to be cheerful. “And another warning, Mr.
Vere, never to judge by appearances.” She looked at him, and returned to
the children.

Ovid’s eyes followed her compassionately. “Poor wretch!” he thought.
“What an infernal temper, and how hard she tries to control it!” He
joined Carmina, with a new delight in being near her again. Zo was still
in ecstasies over the Piping Crow. “Oh, the jolly little chap! Look
how he cocks his head! He mocks me when I whistle. Buy him,” cried Zo,
tugging at Ovid’s coat tails in the excitement that possessed her; “buy
him, and let me take him home with me!”

Some visitors within hearing began to laugh. Miss Minerva opened her
lips; Maria opened her lips. To the astonishment of both of them the
coming rebuke proved to be needless.

A sudden transformation to silence and docility had made a new creature
of Zo, before they could speak--and Ovid had unconsciously worked the
miracle. For the first time in the child’s experience, he had suffered
his coat tails to be pulled without immediately attending to her. Who
was he looking at? It was only too easy to see that Carmina had got
him all to herself. The jealous little heart swelled in Zo’s bosom.
In silent perplexity she kept watch on the friend who had never
disappointed her before. Little by little, her slow intelligence began
to realise the discovery of something in his face which made him look
handsomer than ever, and which she had never seen in it yet. They all
left the aviaries, and turned to the railed paddocks in which the larger
birds were assembled. And still Zo followed so quietly, so silently,
that her elder sister--threatened with a rival in good behaviour--looked
at her in undisguised alarm.

Incited by Maria (who felt the necessity of vindicating her character)
Miss Minerva began a dissertation on cranes, suggested by the birds with
the brittle-looking legs hopping up to her in expectation of something
to eat. Ovid was absorbed in attending to his cousin; he had provided
himself with some bread, and was helping Carmina to feed the birds. But
one person noticed Zo, now that her strange lapse into good behaviour
had lost the charm of novelty. Old Teresa watched her. There was
something plainly troubling the child in secret; she had a mind to know
what it might be.

Zo approached Ovid again, determined to understand the change in him if
perseverance could do it. He was talking so confidentially to Carmina,
that he almost whispered in her ear. Zo eyed him, without daring to
touch his coat tails again. Miss Minerva tried hard to go on composedly
with the dissertation on cranes. “Flocks of these birds, Maria, pass
periodically over the southern and central countries of Europe”--Her
breath failed her, as she looked at Ovid: she could say no more.
Zo stopped those maddening confidences; Zo, in desperate want of
information, tugged boldly at Carmina’s skirts this time.

The young girl turned round directly. “What is it, dear?”

With big tears of indignation rising in her eyes, Zo pointed to Ovid. “I
say!” she whispered, “is he going to buy the Piping Crow for you?”

To Zo’s discomfiture they both smiled. She dried her eyes with her
fists, and waited doggedly for an answer. Carmina set the child’s mind
at ease very prettily and kindly; and Ovid added the pacifying influence
of a familiar pat on her cheek. Noticed at last, and satisfied that
the bird was not to be bought for anybody, Zo’s sense of injury
was appeased; her jealousy melted away as the next result. After a
pause--produced, as her next words implied, by an effort of memory--she
suddenly took Carmina into her confidence.

“Don’t tell!” she began. “I saw another man look like Ovid.”

“When, dear?” Carmina asked--meaning, at what past date.

“When his face was close to yours,” Zo answered--meaning, under what
recent circumstances.

Ovid, hearing this reply, knew his small sister well enough to foresee
embarrassing results if he allowed the conversation to proceed. He took
Carmina’s arm, and led her a little farther on.

Miss Minerva obstinately followed them, with Maria in attendance, still
imperfectly enlightened on the migration of cranes. Zo looked round, in
search of another audience. Teresa had been listening; she was present,
waiting for events. Being herself what stupid people call “an oddity,”
 her sympathies were attracted by this quaint child. In Teresa’s opinion,
seeing the animals was very inferior, as an amusement, to exploring Zo’s
mind. She produced a cake of chocolate, from a travelling bag which she
carried with her everywhere. The cake was sweet, it was flavoured with
vanilla, and it was offered to Zo, unembittered by advice not to
be greedy and make herself ill. Staring hard at Teresa, she took an
experimental bite. The wily duenna chose that propitious moment to
present herself in the capacity of a new audience.

“Who was that other man you saw, who looked like Mr. Ovid?” she asked;
speaking in the tone of serious equality which is always flattering to
the self-esteem of children in intercourse with elders. Zo was so proud
of having her own talk reported by a grown-up stranger, that she even
forgot the chocolate. “I wanted to say more than that,” she announced.
“Would you like to hear the end of it?” And this admirable foreign
person answered, “I should very much like.”

Zo hesitated. To follow out its own little train of thought, in
words, was no easy task to the immature mind which Miss Minerva had so
mercilessly overworked. Led by old Dame Nature (first of governesses!)
Zo found her way out of the labyrinth by means of questions.

“Do you know Joseph?” she began.

Teresa had heard the footman called by his name: she knew who Joseph
was.

“Do you know Matilda?” Zo proceeded.

Teresa had heard the housemaid called by her name: she knew who Matilda
was. And better still, she helped her little friend by a timely guess
at what was coming, presented under the form of a reminder. “You saw Mr.
Ovid’s face close to Carmina’s face,” she suggested.

Zo nodded furiously--the end of it was coming already.

“And before that,” Teresa went on, “you saw Joseph’s face close to
Matilda’s face.”

“I saw Joseph kiss Matilda!” Zo burst out, with a scream of triumph.
“Why doesn’t Ovid kiss Carmina?”

A deep bass voice, behind them, answered gravely: “Because the governess
is in the way.” And a big bamboo walking-stick pointed over their heads
at Miss Minerva. Zo instantly recognised the stick, and took it into her
own hands.

Teresa turned--and found herself in the presence of a remarkable man.




CHAPTER XII.

In the first place, the stranger was almost tall enough to be shown as a
giant; he towered to a stature of six feet six inches, English measure.
If his immense bones had been properly covered with flesh, he might have
presented the rare combination of fine proportions with great height. He
was so miserably--it might almost be said, so hideously--thin that his
enemies spoke of him as “the living skeleton.” His massive forehead,
his great gloomy gray eyes, his protuberant cheek-bones, overhung
a fleshless lower face naked of beard, whiskers, and moustache. His
complexion added to the startling effect which his personal appearance
produced on strangers. It was of the true gipsy-brown, and, being darker
in tone than his eyes, added remarkably to the weird look, the dismal
thoughtful scrutiny, which it was his habit to fix on persons talking
with him, no matter whether they were worthy of attention or not. His
straight black hair hung as gracelessly on either side of his hollow
face as the hair of an American Indian. His great dusky hands, never
covered by gloves in the summer time, showed amber-coloured nails on
bluntly-pointed fingers, turned up at the tips. Those tips felt like
satin when they touched you. When he wished to be careful, he could
handle the frailest objects with the most exquisite delicacy. His dress
was of the recklessly loose and easy kind. His long frock-coat descended
below his knees; his flowing trousers were veritable bags; his lean and
wrinkled throat turned about in a widely-opened shirt-collar, unconfined
by any sort of neck-tie. He had a theory that a head-dress should
be solid enough to resist a chance blow--a fall from a horse, or the
dropping of a loose brick from a house under repair. His hard black hat,
broad and curly at the brim, might have graced the head of a bishop, if
it had not been secularised by a queer resemblance to the bell-shaped
hat worn by dandies in the early years of the present century. In one
word he was, both in himself and in his dress, the sort of man whom no
stranger is careless enough to pass without turning round for a second
look. Teresa, eyeing him with reluctant curiosity, drew back a step, and
privately reviled him (in the secrecy of her own language) as an ugly
beast! Even his name startled people by the outlandish sound of it.
Those enemies who called him “the living skeleton” said it revealed his
gipsy origin. In medical and scientific circles he was well and widely
known as--Doctor Benjulia.

Zo ran away with his bamboo stick. After a passing look of gloomy
indifference at the duenna, he called to the child to come back.

She obeyed him in an oddly indirect way, as if she had been returning
against her will. At the same time she looked up in his face, with an
absence of shyness which showed, like the snatching away of his stick,
that she was familiarly acquainted with him, and accustomed to take
liberties. And yet there was an expression of uneasy expectation in her
round attentive eyes. “Do you want it back again?” she asked, offering
the stick.

“Of course I do. What would your mother say to me, if you tumbled over
my big bamboo, and dashed out your brains on this hard gravel walk?”

“Have you been to see Mama?” Zo asked.

“I have _not_ been to see Mama--but I know what she would say to me if
you dashed out your brains, for all that.”

“What would she say?”

“She would say--Doctor Benjulia, your name ought to be Herod.”’

“Who was Herod?”

“Herod was a Royal Jew, who killed little girls when they took away his
walking-stick. Come here, child. Shall I tickle you?”

“I knew you’d say that,” Zo answered.

When men in general thoroughly enjoy the pleasure of talking nonsense
to children, they can no more help smiling than they can help breathing.
The doctor was an extraordinary exception to this rule; his grim face
never relaxed--not even when Zo reminded him that one of his favourite
recreations was tickling her. She obeyed, however, with the curious
appearance of reluctant submission showing itself once more. He put two
of his soft big finger-tips on her spine, just below the back of her
neck, and pressed on the place. Zo started and wriggled under his touch.
He observed her with as serious an interest as if he had been conducting
a medical experiment. “That’s how you make our dog kick with his leg,”
 said Zo, recalling her experience of the doctor in the society of the
dog. “How do you do it?”

“I touch the Cervical Plexus,” Doctor Benjulia answered as gravely as
ever.

This attempt at mystifying the child failed completely. Zo considered
the unknown tongue in which he had answered her as being equivalent to
lessons. She declined to notice the Cervical Plexus, and returned to the
little terrier at home. “Do you think the dog likes it?” she asked.

“Never mind the dog. Do _you_ like it?”

“I don’t know.”

Doctor Benjulia turned to Teresa. His gloomy gray eyes rested on her, as
they might have rested on any inanimate object near him--on the railing
that imprisoned the birds, or on the pipes that kept the monkey-house
warm. “I have been playing the fool, ma’am, with this child,” he said;
“and I fear I have detained you. I beg your pardon.” He pulled off his
episcopal hat, and walked grimly on, without taking any further notice
of Zo.

Teresa made her best courtesy in return. The magnificent civility of the
ugly giant daunted, while it flattered her. “The manners of a prince,”
 she said, “and the complexion of a gipsy. Is he a nobleman?”

Zo answered, “He’s a doctor,”--as if that was something much better.

“Do you like him?” Teresa inquired next.

Zo answered the duenna as she had answered the doctor: “I don’t know.”

In the meantime, Ovid and his cousin had not been unobservant of what
was passing at a little distance from them. Benjulia’s great height, and
his evident familiarity with the child, stirred Carmina’s curiosity.

Ovid seemed to be disinclined to talk of him. Miss Minerva made herself
useful, with the readiest politeness. She mentioned his odd name, and
described him as one of Mrs. Gallilee’s old friends. “Of late years,”
 she proceeded, “he is said to have discontinued medical practice, and
devoted himself to chemical experiments. Nobody seems to know much about
him. He has built a house in a desolate field--in some lost suburban
neighbourhood that nobody can discover. In plain English, Dr. Benjulia
is a mystery.”

Hearing this, Carmina appealed again to Ovid.

“When I am asked riddles,” she said, “I am never easy till the answer
is guessed for me. And when I hear of mysteries, I am dying to have them
revealed. You are a doctor yourself. Do tell me something more!”

Ovid might have evaded her entreaties by means of an excuse. But her
eyes were irresistible: they looked him into submission in an instant.

“Doctor Benjulia is what we call a Specialist,” he said. “I mean that
he only professes to treat certain diseases. Brains and nerves are
Benjulia’s diseases. Without quite discontinuing his medical practice,
he limits himself to serious cases--when other doctors are puzzled, you
know, and want him to help them. With this exception, he has certainly
sacrificed his professional interests to his mania for experiments in
chemistry. What those experiments are, nobody knows but himself. He
keeps the key of his laboratory about him by day and by night. When the
place wants cleaning, he does the cleaning with his own hands.”

Carmina listened with great interest: “Has nobody peeped in at the
windows?” she asked.

“There are no windows--only a skylight in the roof.”

“Can’t somebody get up on the roof, and look in through the skylight?”

Ovid laughed. “One of his men-servants is said to have tried that
experiment,” he replied.

“And what did the servant see?”

“A large white blind, drawn under the skylight, and hiding the whole
room from view. Somehow, the doctor discovered him--and the man was
instantly dismissed. Of course there are reports which explain the
mystery of the doctor and his laboratory. One report says that he
is trying to find a way of turning common metals into gold. Another
declares that he is inventing some explosive compound, so horribly
destructive that it will put an end to war. All I can tell you is, that
his mind (when I happen to meet him) seems to be as completely absorbed
as ever in brains and nerves. But, what they can have to do with
chemical experiments, secretly pursued in a lonely field, is a riddle to
which I have thus far found no answer.

“Is he married?” Carmina inquired.

The question seemed to amuse Ovid. “If Doctor Benjulia had a wife, you
think we might get at his secrets? There is no such chance for us--he
manages his domestic affairs for himself.”

“Hasn’t he even got a housekeeper?”

“Not even a housekeeper!”

While he was making that reply, he saw the doctor slowly advancing
towards them. “Excuse me for one minute,” he resumed; “I will just speak
to him, and come back to you.”

Carmina turned to Miss Minerva in surprise.

“Ovid seems to have some reason for keeping the tall man away from us,”
 she said. “Does he dislike Doctor Benjulia?”

But for restraining motives, the governess might have gratified her
hatred of Carmina by a sharp reply. She had her reasons--not only after
what she had overheard in the conservatory, but after what she had seen
in the Gardens--for winning Carmina’s confidence, and exercising over
her the influence of a trusted friend. Miss Minerva made instant use of
her first opportunity.

“I can tell you what I have noticed myself,” she said confidentially.
“When Mrs. Gallilee gives parties, I am allowed to be present--to see
the famous professors of science. On one of these occasions they were
talking of instinct and reason. Your cousin, Mr. Ovid Vere, said it was
no easy matter to decide where instinct ended and reason began. In
his own experience, he had sometimes found people of feeble minds, who
judged by instinct, arrive at sounder conclusions than their superiors
in intelligence, who judged by reason. The talk took another turn--and,
soon after, Doctor Benjulia joined the guests. I don’t know whether you
have observed that Mr. Gallilee is very fond of his stepson?”

Oh, yes! Carmina had noticed that. “I like Mr. Gallilee,” she said
warmly; “he is such a nice, kind-hearted, natural old man.”

Miss Minerva concealed a sneer under a smile. Fond of Mr. Gallilee? what
simplicity! “Well,” she resumed, “the doctor paid his respects to the
master of the house, and then he shook hands with Mr. Ovid; and then
the scientific gentlemen all got round him, and had learned talk. Mr.
Gallilee came up to his stepson, looking a little discomposed. He spoke
in a whisper--you know his way?--‘Ovid, do you like Doctor Benjulia?
Don’t mention it; I hate him.’ Strong language for Mr. Gallilee, wasn’t
it? Mr. Ovid said, ‘Why do you hate him?’ And poor Mr. Gallilee answered
like a child, ‘Because I do.’ Some ladies came in, and the old gentleman
left us to speak to them. I ventured to say to Mr. Ovid, ‘Is that
instinct or reason?’ He took it quite seriously. ‘Instinct,’ he
said--‘and it troubles me.’ I leave you, Miss Carmina, to draw your own
conclusion.”

They both looked up. Ovid and the doctor were walking slowly away from
them, and were just passing Teresa and the child. At the same moment,
one of the keepers of the animals approached Benjulia. After they had
talked together for a while, the man withdrew. Zo (who had heard it all,
and had understood a part of it) ran up to Carmina, charged with news.

“There’s a sick monkey in the gardens, in a room all by himself!” the
child cried. “And, I say, look there!” She pointed excitedly to Benjulia
and Ovid, walking on again slowly in the direction of the aviaries.
“There’s the big doctor who tickles me! He says he’ll see the poor
monkey, as soon as he’s done with Ovid. And what do you think he said
besides? He said perhaps he’d take the monkey home with him.”

“I wonder what’s the matter with the poor creature?” Carmina asked.

“After what Mr. Ovid has told us, I think I know,” Miss Minerva
answered. “Doctor Benjulia wouldn’t be interested in the monkey unless
it had a disease of the brain.”




CHAPTER XIII.

Ovid had promised to return to Carmina in a minute. The minutes passed,
and still Doctor Benjulia held him in talk.

Now that he was no longer seeking amusement, in his own dreary way,
by mystifying Zo, the lines seemed to harden in the doctor’s fleshless
face. A scrupulously polite man, he was always cold in his politeness.
He waited to have his hand shaken, and waited to be spoken to. And
yet, on this occasion, he had something to say. When Ovid opened the
conversation, he changed the subject directly.

“Benjulia! what brings You to the Zoological Gardens?”

“One of the monkeys has got brain disease; and they fancy I might like
to see the beast before they kill him. Have you been thinking lately of
that patient we lost?”

Not at the moment remembering the patient, Ovid made no immediate reply.
The doctor seemed to distrust his silence.

“You don’t mean to say you have forgotten the case?” he resumed. “We
called it hysteria, not knowing what else it was. I don’t forgive the
girl for slipping through our fingers; I hate to be beaten by Death, in
that way. Have you made up your mind what to do, on the next occasion?
Perhaps you think you could have saved her life if you had been sent
for, now?”

“No, indeed, I am just as ignorant--”

“Give ignorance time,” Benjulia interposed, “and ignorance will become
knowledge--if a man is in earnest. The proper treatment might occur to
you to-morrow.”

He held to his idea with such obstinacy that Ovid set him right, rather
impatiently. “The proper treatment has as much chance of occurring
to the greatest ass in the profession,” he answered, “as it has of
occurring to me. I can put my mind to no good medical use; my work has
been too much for me. I am obliged to give up practice, and rest--for a
time.”

Not even a formal expression of sympathy escaped Doctor Benjulia. Having
been a distrustful friend so far, he became an inquisitive friend now.
“You’re going away, of course,” he said. “Where to? On the Continent?
Not to Italy--if you really want to recover your health!”

“What is the objection to Italy?”

The doctor put his great hand solemnly on his young friend’s shoulder.
“The medical schools in that country are recovering their past
reputation,” he said. “They are becoming active centres of physiological
inquiry. You will be dragged into it, to a dead certainty. They’re sure
to try what they can strike out by collision with a man like you. What
will become of that overworked mind of yours, when a lot of professors
are searching it without mercy? Have you ever been to Canada?”

“No. Have you?”

“I have been everywhere. Canada is just the place for you, in this
summer season. Bracing air; and steady-going doctors who leave the fools
in Europe to pry into the secrets of Nature. Thousands of miles of land,
if you like riding. Thousands of miles of water, if you like sailing.
Pack up, and go to Canada.”

What did all this mean? Was he afraid that his colleague might stumble
on some discovery which he was in search of himself? And did the
discovery relate to his own special subject of brains and nerves? Ovid
made an attempt to understand him.

“Tell me something about yourself, Benjulia,” he said. “Are you
returning to your regular professional work?”

Benjulia struck his bamboo stick emphatically on the gravel-walk.
“Never! Unless I know more than I know now.”

This surely meant that he was as much devoted to his chemical
experiments as ever? In that case, how could Ovid (who knew nothing of
chemical experiments) be an obstacle in the doctor’s way? Baffled thus
far, he made another attempt at inducing Benjulia to explain himself.

“When is the world to hear of your discoveries?” he asked.

The doctor’s massive forehead gathered ominously into a frown, “Damn the
world!” That was his only reply.

Ovid was not disposed to allow himself to be kept in the dark in this
way. “I suppose you are going on with your experiments?” he said.

The gloom of Benjulia’s grave eyes deepened: they stared with a stern
fixedness into vacancy. His great head bent slowly over his broad
breast. The whole man seemed to be shut up in himself. “I go on a way of
my own,” he growled. “Let nobody cross it.”

After that reply, to persist in making inquiries would only have ended
in needlessly provoking an irritable man. Ovid looked back towards
Carmina. “I must return to my friends,” he said.

The doctor lifted his head, like a man awakened. “Have I been rude?” he
asked. “Don’t talk to me about my experiments. That’s my raw place,
and you hit me on it. What did you say just now? Friends? who are your
friends?” He rubbed his hand savagely over his forehead--it was a way he
had of clearing his mind. “I know,” he went on. “I saw your friends just
now. Who’s the young lady?” His most intimate companions had never heard
him laugh: they had sometimes seen his thin-lipped mouth widen drearily
into a smile. It widened now. “Whoever she is,” he proceeded, “Zo
wonders why you don’t kiss her.”

This specimen of Benjulia’s attempts at pleasantry was not exactly
to Ovid’s taste. He shifted the topic to his little sister. “You were
always fond of Zo,” he said.

Benjulia looked thoroughly puzzled. Fondness for anybody was, to all
appearance, one of the few subjects on which he had not qualified
himself to offer an opinion. He gave his head another savage rub, and
returned to the subject of the young lady. “Who is she?” he asked again.

“My cousin,” Ovid replied as shortly as possible.

“Your cousin? A girl of Lady Northlake’s?”

“No: my late uncle’s daughter.”

Benjulia suddenly came to a standstill. “What!” he cried, “has that
misbegotten child grown up to be a woman?”’

Ovid started. Words of angry protest were on his lips, when he perceived
Teresa and Zo on one side of him, and the keeper of the monkeys on the
other. Benjulia dismissed the man, with the favourable answer which
Zo had already reported. They walked on again. Ovid was at liberty to
speak.

“Do you know what you said of my cousin, just now?” he began.

His tone seemed to surprise the doctor. “What did I say?” he asked.

“You used a very offensive word. You called Carmina a ‘misbegotten
child.’ Are you repeating some vile slander on the memory of her
mother?”

Benjulia came to another standstill. “Slander?” he repeated--and said no
more.

Ovid’s anger broke out. “Yes!” he replied. “Or a lie, if you like, told
of a woman as high above reproach as your mother or mine!”

“You are hot,” the doctor remarked, and walked on again. “When I was in
Italy--” he paused to calculate, “when I was at Rome, fifteen years
ago, your cousin was a wretched little rickety child. I said to Robert
Graywell, ‘Don’t get too fond of that girl; she’ll never live to grow
up.’ He said something about taking her away to the mountain air. I
didn’t think, myself, the mountain air would be of any use. It seems
I was wrong. Well! it’s a surprise to me to find her--” he waited, and
calculated again, “to find her grown up to be seventeen years old.” To
Ovid’s ears, there was an inhuman indifference in his tone as he said
this, which it was impossible not to resent, by looks, if not in words.
Benjulia noticed the impression that he had produced, without in the
least understanding it. “Your nervous system’s in a nasty state,” he
remarked; “you had better take care of yourself. I’ll go and look at the
monkey.”

His face was like the face of the impenetrable sphinx; his deep bass
voice droned placidly. Ovid’s anger had passed by him like the passing
of the summer air. “Good-bye!” he said; “and take care of those nasty
nerves. I tell you again--they mean mischief.”

Not altogether willingly, Ovid made his apologies. “If I have
misunderstood you, I beg your pardon. At the same time, I don’t think I
am to blame. Why did you mislead me by using that detestable word?”

“Wasn’t it the right word?”

“The right word--when you only wanted to speak of a poor sickly child!
Considering that you took your degree at Oxford--”

“You could expect nothing better from the disadvantages of my
education,” said the doctor, finishing the sentence with the grave
composure that distinguished him. “When I said ‘misbegotten,’ perhaps
I ought to have said ‘half-begotten’? Thank you for reminding me. I’ll
look at the dictionary when I get home.”

Ovid’s mind was not set at ease yet. “There’s one other thing,” he
persisted, “that seems unaccountable.” He started, and seized Benjulia
by the arm. “Stop!” he cried, with a sudden outburst of alarm.

“Well?” asked the doctor, stopping directly. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” said Ovid, recoiling from a stain on the gravel walk, caused
by the remains of an unlucky beetle, crushed under his friend’s heavy
foot. “You trod on the beetle before I could stop you.”

Benjulia’s astonishment at finding an adult male human being (not in a
lunatic asylum) anxious to spare the life of a beetle, literally struck
him speechless. His medical instincts came to his assistance. “You had
better leave London at once,” he suggested. “Get into pure air, and be
out of doors all day long.” He turned over the remains of the beetle
with the end of his stick. “The common beetle,” he said; “I haven’t
damaged a Specimen.”

Ovid returned to the subject, which had suffered interruption through
his abortive little act of mercy. “You knew my uncle in Italy. It seems
strange, Benjulia, that I should never have heard of it before.”

“Yes; I knew your uncle; and,” he added with especial emphasis, “I knew
his wife.”

“Well?”

“Well, I can’t say I felt any particular interest in either of them.
Nothing happened afterwards to put me in mind of the acquaintance till
you told me who the young lady was, just now.

“Surely my mother must have reminded you?”

“Not that I can remember. Women in her position don’t much fancy talking
of a relative who has married”--he stopped to choose his next words. “I
don’t want to be rude; suppose we say married beneath him?”

Reflection told Ovid that this was true. Even in conversation with
himself (before the arrival in England of Robert’s Will), his mother
rarely mentioned her brother--and still more rarely his family. There
was another reason for Mrs. Gallilee’s silence, known only to herself.
Robert was in the secret of her debts, and Robert had laid her under
heavy pecuniary obligations. The very sound of his name was revolting to
his amiable sister: it reminded her of that humiliating sense, known in
society as a sense of gratitude.

Carmina was still waiting--and there was nothing further to be gained by
returning to the subject of her mother with such a man as Benjulia. Ovid
held out his hand to say good-bye.

Taking the offered hand readily enough, the doctor repeated his odd
question--“I haven’t been rude, have I?”--with an unpleasant appearance
of going through a form purely for form’s sake. Ovid’s natural
generosity of feeling urged him to meet the advance, strangely as it had
been made, with a friendly reception.

“I am afraid it is I who have been rude,” he said. “Will you go back
with me, and be introduced to Carmina?”

Benjulia made his acknowledgments in his own remarkable way. “No, thank
you,” he said, quietly, “I’d rather see the monkey.”




CHAPTER XIV.

In the meantime, Zo had become the innocent cause of a difference of
opinion between two no less dissimilar personages than Maria and the
duenna.

Having her mind full of the sick monkey, the child felt a natural
curiosity to see the other monkeys who were well. Amiable Miss Minerva
consulted her young friend from Italy before she complied with Zo’s
wishes. Would Miss Carmina like to visit the monkey-house? Ovid’s
cousin, remembering Ovid’s promise, looked towards the end of the walk.
He was not returning to her--he was not even in sight. Carmina resigned
herself to circumstances, with a little air of pique which was duly
registered in Miss Minerva’s memory.

Arriving at the monkey-house, Teresa appeared in a new character. She
surprised her companions by showing an interest in natural history.

“Are they all monkeys in that big place?” she asked. “I don’t know much
about foreign beasts. How do they like it, I wonder?”

This comprehensive inquiry was addressed to the governess, as the most
learned person present. Miss Minerva referred to her elder pupil with
an encouraging smile. “Maria will inform you,” she said. “Her studies
in natural history have made her well acquainted with the habits of
monkeys.”

Thus authorised to exhibit her learning, even the discreet Maria
actually blushed with pleasure. It was that young lady’s most
highly-prized reward to display her knowledge (in imitation of her
governess’s method of instruction) for the benefit of unfortunate
persons of the lower rank, whose education had been imperfectly carried
out. The tone of amiable patronage with which she now imparted useful
information to a woman old enough to be her grandmother, would have made
the hands of the bygone generation burn to box her ears.

“The monkeys are kept in large and airy cages,” Maria began; “and the
temperature is regulated with the utmost care. I shall be happy to point
out to you the difference between the monkey and the ape. You are
not perhaps aware that the members of the latter family are called
‘Simiadae,’ and are without tails and cheek-pouches?”

Listening so far in dumb amazement, Teresa checked the flow of
information at tails and cheek-pouches.

“What gibberish is this child talking to me?” she asked. “I want to know
how the monkeys amuse themselves in that large house?”

Maria’s perfect training condescended to enlighten even this state of
mind.

“They have ropes to swing on,” she answered sweetly; “and visitors feed
them through the wires of the cage. Branches of trees are also placed
for their diversion; reminding many of them no doubt of the vast
tropical forests in which, as we learn from travellers, they pass in
flocks from tree to tree.”

Teresa held up her hand as a signal to stop. “A little of You, my young
lady, goes a long way,” she said. “Consider how much I can hold, before
you cram me at this rate.”

Maria was bewildered, but nor daunted yet. “Pardon me,” she pleaded; “I
fear I don’t quite understand you.”

“Then there are two of us puzzled,” the duenna remarked. _“I_ don’t
understand _you._ I shan’t go into that house. A Christian can’t be
expected to care about beasts--but right is right all the world over.
Because a monkey is a nasty creature (as I have heard, not even good
to eat when he’s dead), that’s no reason for taking him out of his
own country and putting him into a cage. If we are to see creatures in
prison, let’s see creatures who have deserved it--men and women, rogues
and sluts. The monkeys haven’t deserved it. Go in--I’ll wait for you at
the door.”

Setting her bitterest emphasis on this protest, which expressed
inveterate hostility to Maria (using compassion for caged animals as the
readiest means at hand), Teresa seated herself in triumph on the nearest
bench.

A young person, possessed of no more than ordinary knowledge, might have
left the old woman to enjoy the privilege of saying the last word. Miss
Minerva’s pupil, exuding information as it were at every pore in her
skin, had been rudely dried up at a moment’s notice. Even earthly
perfection has its weak places within reach. Maria lost her temper.


“You will allow me to remind you,” she said, “that intelligent curiosity
leads us to study the habits of animals that are new to us. We place
them in a cage--”

Teresa lost _her_ temper.

“You’re an animal that’s new to me,” cried the irate duenna. “I never
in all my life met with such a child before. If you please, madam
governess, put this girl into a cage. My intelligent curiosity wants to
study a monkey that’s new to me.”

It was fortunate for Teresa that she was Carmina’s favourite and friend,
and, as such, a person to be carefully handled. Miss Minerva stopped
the growing quarrel with the readiest discretion and good-feeling. She
patted Teresa on the shoulder, and looked at Carmina with a pleasant
smile. “Worthy old creature! how full of humour she is! The energy of
the people, Miss Carmina. I often remark the quaint force with which
they express their ideas. No--not a word of apology, I beg and pray.
Maria, my dear, take your sister’s hand, and we will follow.” She put
her arm in Carmina’s arm with the happiest mixture of familiarity and
respect, and she nodded to Carmina’s old companion with the cordiality
of a good-humoured friend.

Teresa was not further irritated by being kept waiting for any length of
time. In a few minutes Carmina joined her on the bench.

“Tired of the beasts already, my pretty one?”

“Worse than tired--driven away by the smell! Dear old Teresa, why did
you speak so roughly to Miss Minerva and Maria?”

“Because I hate them! because I hate the family! Was your poor father
demented in his last moments, when he trusted you among these detestable
people?”

Carmina listened in astonishment. “You said just the contrary of the
family,” she exclaimed, “only yesterday!”

Teresa hung her head in confusion. Her well-meant attempt to reconcile
Carmina to the new life on which she had entered was now revealed as a
sham, thanks to her own outbreak of temper. The one honest alternative
left was to own the truth, and put Carmina on her guard without alarming
her, if possible.

“I’ll never tell a lie again, as long as I live,” Teresa declared. “You
see I didn’t like to discourage you. After all, I dare say I’m more
wrong than right in my opinion. But it _is_ my opinion, for all that.
I hate those women, mistress and governess, both alike. There! now it’s
out. Are you angry with me?”

“I am never angry with you, my old friend; I am only a little vexed.
Don’t say you hate people, after only knowing them for a day or two!
I am sure Miss Minerva has been very kind--to me, as well as to you. I
feel ashamed of myself already for having begun by disliking her.”

Teresa took her young mistress’s hand, and patted it compassionately.
“Poor innocent, if you only had my experience to help you! There are
good ones and bad ones among all creatures. I say to you the Gallilees
are bad ones! Even their music-master (I saw him this morning) looks
like a rogue. You will tell me the poor old gentleman is harmless,
surely. I shall not contradict that--I shall only ask, what is the use
of a man who is as weak as water? Oh, I like him, but I distinguish!
I also like Zo. But what is a child--especially when that beastly
governess has muddled her unfortunate little head with learning? No, my
angel, there’s but one person among these people who comforts me, when I
think of the day that will part us. Ha! do I see a little colour coming
into your cheeks? You sly girl! you know who it is. _There_ is what I
call a Man! If I was as young as you are, and as pretty as you are--”

A warning gesture from Carmina closed Teresa’s lips. Ovid was rapidly
approaching them.

He looked a little annoyed, and he made his apologies without mentioning
the doctor’s name. His cousin was interested enough in him already to
ask herself what this meant. Did he really dislike Benjulia, and had
there been some disagreement between them?

“Was the tall doctor so very interesting?” she ventured to inquire.

“Not in the least!” He answered as if the subject was disagreeable to
him--and yet he returned to it. “By-the-by, did you ever hear Benjulia’s
name mentioned, at home in Italy?”

“Never! Did he know my father and mother?”

“He says so.”

“Oh, do introduce me to him!”

“We must wait a little. He prefers being introduced to the monkey
to-day. Where are Miss Minerva and the children?”

Teresa replied. She pointed to the monkey-house, and then drew Ovid
aside. “Take her to see some more birds, and trust me to keep the
governess out of your way,” whispered the good creature. “Make love--hot
love to her, doctor!”

In a minute more the cousins were out of sight. How are you to make love
to a young girl, after an acquaintance of a day or two? The question
would have been easily answered by some men. It thoroughly puzzled Ovid.

“I am so glad to get back to you!” he said, honestly opening his mind to
her. “Were you half as glad when you saw me return?”

He knew nothing of the devious and serpentine paths by which love finds
the way to its ends. It had not occurred to him to approach her with
those secret tones and stolen looks which speak for themselves. She
answered with the straightforward directness of which he had set the
example.

“I hope you don’t think me insensible to your kindness,” she said. “I am
more pleased and more proud than I can tell you.”

“Proud!” Ovid repeated, not immediately understanding her.

“Why not?” she asked. “My poor father used to say you would be an honour
to the family. Ought I not to be proud, when I find such a man taking so
much notice of me?”

She looked up at him shyly. At that moment, he would have resigned all
his prospects of celebrity for the privilege of kissing her. He made
another attempt to bring her--in spirit--a little nearer to him.

“Carmina, do you remember where you first saw me?”

“How can you ask?--it was in the concert-room. When I saw you there,
I remembered passing you in the large Square. It seems a strange
coincidence that you should have gone to the very concert that Teresa
and I went to by accident.”

Ovid ran the risk, and made his confession. “It was no coincidence,” he
said. “After our meeting in the Square I followed you to the concert.”

This bold avowal would have confused a less innocent girl. It only took
Carmina by surprise.

“What made you follow us?” she asked.

Us? Did she suppose he had followed the old woman? Ovid lost no time
in setting her right. “I didn’t even see Teresa,” he said. “I followed
You.”

She was silent. What did her silence mean? Was she confused, or was she
still at a loss to understand him? That morbid sensitiveness, which was
one of the most serious signs of his failing health, was by this time
sufficiently irritated to hurry him into extremities. “Did you ever
hear,” he asked, “of such a thing as love at first sight?”

She started. Surprise, confusion, doubt, succeeded each other in rapid
changes on her mobile and delicate face. Still silent, she roused her
courage, and looked at him.

If he had returned the look, he would have told the story of his first
love without another word to help him. But his shattered nerves unmanned
him, at the moment of all others when it was his interest to be bold.
The fear that he might have allowed himself to speak too freely--a
weakness which would never have misled him in his days of health and
strength--kept his eyes on the ground. She looked away again with a
quick flush of shame. When such a man as Ovid spoke of love at first
sight, what an instance of her own vanity it was to have thought that
his mind was dwelling on _her!_ He had kindly lowered himself to the
level of a girl’s intelligence, and had been trying to interest her by
talking the language of romance. She was so dissatisfied with herself
that she made a movement to turn back.

He was too bitterly disappointed, on his side, to attempt to prolong the
interview. A deadly sense of weakness was beginning to overpower him. It
was the inevitable result of his utter want of care for himself. After a
sleepless night, he had taken a long walk before breakfast; and to
these demands on his failing reserves of strength, he had now added the
fatigue of dawdling about a garden. Physically and mentally he had no
energy left.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said to Carmina sadly; “I am afraid I have
offended you.”

“Oh, how little you know me,” she cried, “if you think that!”

This time their eyes met. The truth dawned on her--and he saw it.

He took her hand. The clammy coldness of his grasp startled her. “Do you
still wonder why I followed you?” he asked. The words were so faintly
uttered that she could barely hear them. Heavy drops of perspiration
stood on his forehead; his face faded to a gray and ghastly
whiteness--he staggered, and tried desperately to catch at the branch
of a tree near them. She threw her arms round him. With all her little
strength she tried to hold him up. Her utmost effort only availed to
drag him to the grass plot by their side, and to soften his fall. Even
as the cry for help passed her lips, she saw help coming. A tall man was
approaching her--not running, even when he saw what had happened; only
stalking with long strides. He was followed by one of the keepers of the
gardens. Doctor Benjulia had his sick monkey to take care of. He kept
the creature sheltered under his long frock-coat.

“Don’t do that, if you please,” was all the doctor said, as Carmina
tried to lift Ovid’s head from the grass. He spoke with his customary
composure, and laid his hand on the heart of the fainting man, as coolly
as if it had been the heart of a stranger. “Which of you two can run the
fastest?” he asked, looking backwards and forwards between Carmina and
the keeper. “I want some brandy.”

The refreshment room was within sight. Before the keeper quite
understood what was required of him, Carmina was speeding over the grass
like Atalanta herself.

Benjulia looked after her, with his usual grave attention. “That wench
can run,” he said to himself, and turned once more to Ovid. “In his
state of health, he’s been fool enough to over-exert himself.” So he
disposed of the case in his own mind. Having done that, he remembered
the monkey, deposited for the time being on the grass. “Too cold for
him,” he remarked, with more appearance of interest than he had shown
yet. “Here, keeper! Pick up the monkey till I’m ready to take him
again.” The man hesitated.

“He might bite me, sir.”

“Pick him up!” the doctor reiterated; “he can’t bite anybody, after
what I’ve done to him.” The monkey was indeed in a state of stupor.
The keeper obeyed his instructions, looking half stupefied himself: he
seemed to be even more afraid of the doctor than of the monkey. “Do you
think I’m the Devil?” Benjulia asked with dismal irony. The man looked
as if he would say “Yes,” if he dared.

Carmina came running back with the brandy. The doctor smelt it first,
and then took notice of her. “Out of breath?” he said.

“Why don’t you give him the brandy?” she answered impatiently.

“Strong lungs,” Benjulia proceeded, sitting down cross-legged by Ovid,
and administering the stimulant without hurrying himself. “Some girls
would not have been able to speak, after such a run as you have had. I
didn’t think much of you or your lungs when you were a baby.”

“Is he coming to himself?” Carmina asked.

“Do you know what a pump is?” Benjulia rejoined. “Very well; a pump
sometimes gets out of order. Give the carpenter time, and he’ll put it
right again.” He let his mighty hand drop on Ovid’s breast. _“This_ pump
is out of order; and I’m the carpenter. Give me time, and I’ll set it
right again. You’re not a bit like your mother.”

Watching eagerly for the slightest signs of recovery in Ovid’s face,
Carmina detected a faint return of colour. She was so relieved that she
was able to listen to the doctor’s oddly discursive talk, and even to
join in it. “Some of our friends used to think I was like my father,”
 she answered.

“Did they?” said Benjulia--and shut his thin-lipped mouth as if he was
determined to drop the subject for ever.

Ovid stirred feebly, and half opened his eyes.

Benjulia got up. “You don’t want me any longer,” he said. “Now, Mr.
Keeper, give me back the monkey.” He dismissed the man, and tucked
the monkey under one arm as if it had been a bundle. “There are your
friends,” he resumed, pointing to the end of the walk. “Good-day!”

Carmina stopped him. Too anxious to stand on ceremony, she laid her hand
on his arm. He shook it off--not angrily: just brushing it away, as he
might have brushed away the ash of his cigar or a splash of mud in the
street.

“What does this fainting fit mean?” she asked timidly. “Is Ovid going to
be ill?”

“Seriously ill--unless you do the right thing with him, and do it at
once.” He walked away. She followed him, humbly and yet resolutely.
“Tell me, if you please,” she said, “what we are to do.”

He looked back over his shoulder. “Send him away.”

She returned, and knelt down by Ovid--still slowly reviving. With a fond
and gentle hand, she wiped the moisture from his forehead.

“Just as we were beginning to understand each other!” she said to
herself, with a sad little sigh.




CHAPTER XV.

Two days passed. In spite of the warnings that he had received, Ovid
remained in London.

The indisputable authority of Benjulia had no more effect on him than
the unanswerable arguments of Mrs. Gallilee. “Recent circumstances” (as
his mother expressed it) “had strengthened his infatuated resistance to
reason.” The dreaded necessity for Teresa’s departure had been hastened
by a telegram from Italy: Ovid felt for Carmina’s distress with
sympathies which made her dearer to him than ever. On the second morning
after the visit to the Zoological Gardens, her fortitude had been
severely tried. She had found the telegram under her pillow, enclosed in
a farewell letter. Teresa had gone.

“My Carmina,--I have kissed you, and cried over you, and I am writing
good-bye as well as my poor eyes will let me. Oh, my heart’s darling, I
cannot be cruel enough to wake you, and see you suffer! Forgive me for
going away, with only this dumb farewell. I am so fond of you--that is
my only excuse. While he still lives, my helpless old man has his claim
on me. Write by every post, and trust me to write back--and remember
what I said when I spoke of Ovid. Love the good man who loves _you;_ and
try to make the best of the others. They cannot surely be cruel to the
poor angel who depends on their kindness. Oh, how hard life is--”

The paper was blotted, and the rest was illegible.

The miserable day of Teresa’s departure was passed by Carmina in the
solitude of her room: gently and firmly, she refused to see anyone. This
strange conduct added to Mrs. Gallilee’s anxieties. Already absorbed in
considering Ovid’s obstinacy, and the means of overcoming it, she was
now confronted by a resolute side in the character of her niece, which
took her by surprise. There might be difficulties to come, in managing
Carmina, which she had not foreseen. Meanwhile, she was left to act on
her own unaided discretion in the serious matter of her son’s failing
health. Benjulia had refused to help her; he was too closely occupied
in his laboratory to pay or receive visits. “I have already given my
advice” (the doctor wrote). “Send him away. When he has had a month’s
change, let me see his letters; and then, if I have anything more to
say, I will tell you what I think of your son.”

Left in this position, Mrs. Gallilee’s hard self-denial yielded to the
one sound conclusion that lay before her. The only influence that could
be now used over Ovid, with the smallest chance of success, was the
influence of Carmina. Three days after Teresa’s departure, she invited
her niece to take tea in her own boudoir. Carmina found her reading. “A
charming book,” she said, as she laid it down, “on a most interesting
subject, Geographical Botany. The author divides the earth into
twenty-five botanical regions--but, I forget; you are not like Maria;
you don’t care about these things.”

“I am so ignorant,” Carmina pleaded. “Perhaps, I may know better when I
get older.” A book on the table attracted her by its beautiful binding.
She took it up. Mrs. Gallilee looked at her with compassionate good
humour.

“Science again, my dear,” she said facetiously, “inviting you in a
pretty dress! You have taken up the ‘Curiosities of Coprolites.’ That
book is one of my distinctions--a presentation copy from the author.”

“What are Coprolites?” Carmina asked, trying to inform herself on the
subject of her aunt’s distinctions.

Still good-humoured, but with an effort that began to appear, Mrs.
Gallilee lowered herself to the level of her niece.

“Coprolites,” she explained, “are the fossilised indigestions of extinct
reptiles. The great philosopher who has written that book has discovered
scales, bones, teeth, and shells--the undigested food of those
interesting Saurians. What a man! what a field for investigation! Tell
me about your own reading. What have you found in the library?”

“Very interesting books--at least to me,” Carmina answered. “I have
found many volumes of poetry. Do you ever read poetry?”

Mrs. Gallilee laid herself back in her chair, and submitted patiently
to her niece’s simplicity. “Poetry?” she repeated, in accents of
resignation. “Oh, good heavens!”

Unlucky Carmina tried a more promising topic. “What beautiful flowers
you have in the drawing-room!” she said.

“Nothing remarkable, my dear. Everybody has flowers in their
drawing-rooms--they are part of the furniture.”

“Did you arrange them yourself, aunt?”

Mrs. Gallilee still endured it. “The florist’s man,” she said, “does all
that. I sometimes dissect flowers, but I never trouble myself to arrange
them. What would be the use of the man if I did?” This view of the
question struck Carmina dumb. Mrs. Gallilee went on. “By-the-by, talking
of flowers reminds one of other superfluities. Have you tried the piano
in your room? Will it do?”

“The tone is quite perfect!” Carmina answered with enthusiasm. “Did
you choose it?” Mrs. Gallilee looked as if she was going to say “Good
Heavens!” again, and perhaps to endure it no longer. Carmina was too
simple to interpret these signs in the right way. Why should her aunt
not choose a piano? “Don’t you like music?” she asked.

Mrs. Gallilee made a last effort. “When you see a little more of
society, my child, you will know that one _must_ like music. So again
with pictures--one _must_ go to the Royal Academy Exhibition. So
again--”

Before she could mention any more social sacrifices, the servant came in
with a letter, and stopped her.

Mrs. Gallilee looked at the address. The weary indifference of her
manner changed to vivid interest, the moment she saw the handwriting.
“From the Professor!” she exclaimed. “Excuse me, for one minute.” She
read the letter, and closed it again with a sigh of relief. “I knew
it!” she said to herself. “I have always maintained that the albuminoid
substance of frog’s eggs is insufficient (viewed as nourishment) to
transform a tadpole into a frog--and, at last, the Professor owns that
I am right. I beg your pardon, Carmina; I am carried away by a subject
that I have been working at in my stolen intervals for weeks past. Let
me give you some tea. I have asked Miss Minerva to join us. What is
keeping her, I wonder? She is usually so punctual. I suppose Zoe has
been behaving badly again.”

In a few minutes more, the governess herself confirmed this maternal
forewarning of the truth. Zo had declined to commit to memory “the
political consequences of the granting of Magna Charta”--and now stood
reserved for punishment, when her mother “had time to attend to it.”
 Mrs. Gallilee at once disposed of this little responsibility. “Bread and
water for tea,” she said, and proceeded to the business of the evening.

“I wish to speak to you both,” she began, “on the subject of my son.”

The two persons addressed waited in silence to hear more. Carmina’s
head drooped: she looked down. Miss Minerva attentively observed Mrs.
Gallilee. “Why am I invited to hear what she has to say about her son?”
 was the question which occurred to the governess. “Is she afraid
that Carmina might tell me about it, if I was not let into the family
secrets?”

Admirably reasoned, and correctly guessed!

Mrs. Gallilee had latterly observed that the governess was insinuating
herself into the confidence of her niece--that is to say, into the
confidence of a young lady, whose father was generally reported to
have died in possession of a handsome fortune. Personal influence, once
obtained over an heiress, is not infrequently misused. To check the
further growth of a friendship of this sort (without openly offending
Miss Minerva) was an imperative duty. Mrs. Gallilee saw her way to the
discreet accomplishment of that object. Her niece and her governess
were interested--diversely interested--in Ovid. If she invited them both
together, to consult with her on the delicate subject of her son,
there would be every chance of exciting some difference of opinion,
sufficiently irritating to begin the process of estrangement, by keeping
them apart when they had left the tea-table.

“It is most important that there should be no misunderstanding among
us,” Mrs. Gallilee proceeded. “Let me set the example of speaking
without reserve. We all three know that Ovid persists in remaining in
London--”

She paused, on the point of finishing the sentence. Although she _had_
converted a Professor, Mrs. Gallilee was still only a woman. There did
enter into her other calculations, the possibility of exciting some
accidental betrayal of her governess’s passion for her son. On alluding
to Ovid, she turned suddenly to Miss Minerva. “I am sure you will excuse
my troubling you with family anxieties,” she said--“especially when they
are connected with the health of my son.”

It was cleverly done, but it laboured under one disadvantage. Miss
Minerva had no idea of what the needless apology meant, having no
suspicion of the discovery of her secret by her employer. But to feel
herself baffled in trying to penetrate Mrs. Gallilee’s motives was
enough, of itself, to put Mrs. Gallilee’s governess on her guard for the
rest of the evening.

“You honour me, madam, by admitting me to your confidence”--was what she
said. “Trip me up, you cat, if you can!”--was what she thought.

Mrs. Gallilee resumed.

“We know that Ovid persists in remaining in London, when change of air
and scene are absolutely necessary to the recovery of his health. And we
know why. Carmina, my child, don’t think for a moment that I blame you!
don’t even suppose that I blame my son. You are too charming a person
not to excuse, nay even to justify, any man’s admiration. But let us (as
we hard old people say) look the facts in the face. If Ovid had not seen
you, he would be now on the health-giving sea, on his way to Spain and
Italy. You are the innocent cause of his obstinate indifference, his
most deplorable and dangerous disregard of the duty which he owes to
himself. He refuses to listen to his mother, he sets the opinion of his
skilled medical colleague at defiance. But one person has any influence
over him now.” She paused again, and tried to trip up the governess once
more. “Miss Minerva, let me appeal to You. I regard you as a member of
our family; I have the sincerest admiration of your tact and good sense.
Am I exceeding the limits of delicacy, if I say plainly to my niece,
Persuade Ovid to go?”

If Carmina had possessed an elder sister, with a plain personal
appearance and an easy conscience, not even that sister could have
matched the perfect composure with which Miss Minerva replied.

“I don’t possess your happy faculty of expressing yourself, Mrs.
Gallilee. But, if I had been in your place, I should have said to the
best of my poor ability exactly what you have said now.” She bent her
head with a graceful gesture of respect, and looked at Carmina with a
gentle sisterly interest while she stirred her tea.

At the very opening of the skirmish, Mrs. Gallilee was defeated. She had
failed to provoke the slightest sign of jealousy, or even of
ill-temper. Unquestionably the most crafty and most cruel woman of the
two--possessing the most dangerously deceitful manner, and the most
mischievous readiness of language--she was, nevertheless, Miss Minerva’s
inferior in the one supreme capacity of which they both stood in need,
the capacity for self-restraint.

She showed this inferiority on expressing her thanks. The underlying
malice broke through the smooth surface that was intended to hide it.
“I am apt to doubt myself,” she said; “and such sound encouragement as
yours always relieves me. Of course I don’t ask you for more than a word
of advice. Of course I don’t expect _you_ to persuade Ovid.”

“Of course not!” Miss Minerva agreed. “May I ask for a little more sugar
in my tea?”

Mrs. Gallilee turned to Carmina.

“Well, my dear? I have spoken to you, as I might have spoken to one
of my own daughters, if she had been of your age. Tell me frankly, in
return, whether I may count on your help.”

Still pale and downcast, Carmina obeyed. “I will do my best, if you wish
it. But--”

“Yes? Go on.”

She still hesitated. Mrs. Gallilee tried gentle remonstrance. “My child,
surely you are not afraid of me?”

She was certainly afraid. But she controlled herself.

“You are Ovid’s mother, and I am only his cousin,” she resumed. “I don’t
like to hear you say that my influence over him is greater than yours.”

It was far from the poor girl’s intention; but there was an implied
rebuke in this. In her present state of irritation, Mrs. Gallilee felt
it.

“Come! come!” she said. “Don’t affect to be ignorant, my dear, of what
you know perfectly well.”

Carmina lifted her head. For the first time in the experience of the
two elder women, this gentle creature showed that she could resent an
insult. The fine spirit that was in her fired her eyes, and fixed them
firmly on her aunt.

“Do you accuse me of deceit?” she asked.

“Let us call it false modesty,” Mrs. Gallilee retorted.

Carmina rose without another word--and walked out of the room.

In the extremity of her surprise, Mrs. Gallilee appealed to Miss
Minerva. “Is she in a passion?”

“She didn’t bang the door,” the governess quietly remarked.

“I am not joking, Miss Minerva.”

“I am not joking either, madam.”

The tone of that answer implied an uncompromising assertion of equality.
You are not to suppose (it said) that a lady drops below your level,
because she receives a salary and teaches your children. Mrs. Gallilee
was so angry, by this time, that she forgot the importance of preventing
a conference between Miss Minerva and her niece. For once, she was the
creature of impulse--the overpowering impulse to dismiss her insolent
governess from her hospitable table.

“May I offer you another cup of tea?”

“Thank you--no more. May I return to my pupils?”

“By all means!”

Carmina had not been five minutes in her own room before she heard a
knock at the door. Had Mrs. Gallilee followed her? “Who is there?” she
asked. And a voice outside answered,

“Only Miss Minerva!”




CHAPTER XVI.

“I am afraid I have startled you?” said the governess, carefully closing
the door.

“I thought it was my aunt,” Carmina answered, as simply as a child.

“Have you been crying?”

“I couldn’t help it, Miss Minerva.”

“Mrs. Gallilee spoke cruelly to you--I don’t wonder at your feeling
angry.”

Carmina gently shook her head. “I have been crying,” she explained,
“because I am sorry and ashamed. How can I make it up with my aunt?
Shall I go back at once and beg her pardon? I think you are my friend,
Miss Minerva. Will you advise me?”

It was so prettily and innocently said that even the governess was
touched--for a moment. “Shall I prove to you that I am your friend?” she
proposed. “I advise you not to go back yet to your aunt--and I will tell
you why. Mrs. Gallilee bears malice; she is a thoroughly unforgiving
woman. And I should be the first to feel it, if she knew what I have
just said to you.”

“Oh, Miss Minerva! you don’t think that I would betray your confidence?”

“No, my dear, I don’t. I felt attracted towards you, when we first met.
You didn’t return the feeling--you (very naturally) disliked me. I am
ugly and ill-tempered: and, if there is anything good in me, it doesn’t
show itself on the surface. Yes! yes! I believe you are beginning to
understand me. If I can make your life here a little happier, as time
goes on, I shall be only too glad to do it.” She put her long yellow
hands on either side of Carmina’s head, and kissed her forehead.

The poor child threw her arms round Miss Minerva’s neck, and cried
her heart out on the bosom of the woman who was deceiving her. “I have
nobody left, now Teresa has gone,” she said. “Oh, do try to be kind to
me--I feel so friendless and so lonely!”

Miss Minerva neither moved nor spoke. She waited, and let the girl cry.

Her heavy black eyebrows gathered into a frown; her sallow face deepened
in colour. She was in a state of rebellion against herself. Through all
the hardening influences of the woman’s life--through the fortifications
against good which watchful evil builds in human hearts--that innocent
outburst of trust and grief had broken its way; and had purified for a
while the fetid inner darkness with divine light. She had entered the
room, with her own base interests to serve. In her small sordid way she,
like her employer, was persecuted by debts--miserable debts to sellers
of expensive washes, which might render her ugly complexion more
passable in Ovid’s eyes; to makers of costly gloves, which might show
Ovid the shape of her hands, and hide their colour; to skilled workmen
in fine leather, who could tempt Ovid to look at her high instep, and
her fine ankle--the only beauties that she could reveal to the only
man whom she cared to please. For the time, those importunate creditors
ceased to threaten her. For the time, what she had heard in the
conservatory, while they were reading the Will, lost its tempting
influence. She remained in the room for half an hour more--and she left
it without having borrowed a farthing.

“Are you easier now?”

“Yes, dear.”

Carmina dried her eyes, and looked shyly at Miss Minerva. “I have been
treating you as if I had a sister,” she said; “you don’t think me too
familiar, I hope?”

“I wish I was your sister, God knows!”

The words were hardly out of her mouth before she was startled by her
own fervour. “Shall I tell you what to do with Mrs. Gallilee?” she said
abruptly. “Write her a little note.”

“Yes! yes! and you will take it for me?”

Carmina’s eyes brightened through her tears, the suggestion was such a
relief! In a minute the note was written: “My dear Aunt, I have behaved
very badly, and I am very much ashamed of it. May I trust to your kind
indulgence to forgive me? I will try to be worthier of your kindness
for the future; and I sincerely beg your pardon.” She signed her name in
breathless haste. “Please take it at once!” she said eagerly.

Miss Minerva smiled. “If I take it,” she said, “I shall do harm instead
of good--I shall be accused of interfering. Give it to one of the
servants. Not yet! When Mrs. Gallilee is angry, she doesn’t get over
it so soon as you seem to think. Leave her to dabble in science first,”
 said the governess in tones of immeasurable contempt. “When she has
half stifled herself with some filthy smell, or dissected some wretched
insect or flower, she may be in a better humour. Wait.”

Carmina thought of the happy days at home in Italy, when her father
used to laugh at her little outbreaks of temper, and good Teresa only
shrugged her shoulders. What a change--oh, me, what a change for the
worse! She drew from her bosom a locket, hung round her neck by a thin
gold chain--and opened it, and kissed the glass over the miniature
portraits inside. “Would you like to see them?” she said to Miss
Minerva. “My mother’s likeness was painted for me by my father; and then
he had his photograph taken to match it. I open my portraits and look at
them, while I say my prayers. It’s almost like having them alive again,
sometimes. Oh, if I only had my father to advise me now--!” Her
heart swelled--but she kept back the tears: she was learning that
self-restraint, poor soul, already! “Perhaps,” she went on, “I ought
not to want advice. After that fainting-fit in the Gardens, if I can
persuade Ovid to leave us, I ought to do it--and I will do it!”

Miss Minerva crossed the room, and looked out of window. Carmina had
roused the dormant jealousy; Carmina had fatally weakened the good
influences which she had herself produced. The sudden silence of her new
friend perplexed her. She too went to the window. “Do you think it would
be taking a liberty?” she asked.

“No.”

A short answer--and still looking out of window! Carmina tried
again. “Besides, there are my aunt’s wishes to consider. After my bad
behaviour--”

Miss Minerva turned round from the window sharply. “Of course! There
can’t be a doubt of it.” Her tone softened a little. “You are young,
Carmina--I suppose I may call you by your name--you are young and
simple. Do those innocent eyes of yours ever see below the surface?”

“I don’t quite understand you.”

“Do you think your aunt’s only motive in wishing Mr. Ovid Vere to leave
London is anxiety about his health? Do you feel no suspicion that she
wants to keep him away from You?”

Carmina toyed with her locket, in an embarrassment which she was quite
unable to disguise. “Are you afraid to trust me?” Miss Minerva asked.
That reproach opened the girl’s lips instantly.

“I am afraid to tell you how foolish I am,” she answered. “Perhaps, I
still feel a little strangeness between us? It seems to be so formal to
call you Miss Minerva. I don’t know what your Christian name is. Will
you tell me?”

Miss Minerva replied rather unwillingly. “My name is Frances. Don’t call
me Fanny!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s too absurd to be endured! What does the mere sound of
Fanny suggest? A flirting, dancing creature--plump and fair, and playful
and pretty!” She went to the looking-glass, and pointed disdainfully to
the reflection of herself. “Sickening to think of,” she said, “when you
look at that. Call me Frances--a man’s name, with only the difference
between an i and an e. No sentiment in it; hard, like me. Well, what was
it you didn’t like to say of yourself?”

Carmina dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s no use asking me what I
do see, or don’t see, in my aunt,” she answered. “I am afraid we shall
never be--what we ought to be to each other. When she came to that
concert, and sat by me and looked at me--” She stopped, and shuddered
over the recollection of it.

Miss Minerva urged her to go on--first, by a gesture; then by a
suggestion: “They said you fainted under the heat.”

“I didn’t feel the heat. I felt a horrid creeping all over me. Before I
looked at her, mind!--when I only knew that somebody was sitting next to
me. And then, I did look round. Her eyes and my eyes flashed into each
other. In that one moment, I lost all sense of myself as if I was dead.
I can only tell you of it in that way. It was a dreadful surprise to
me to remember it--and a dreadful pain--when they brought me to myself
again. Though I do look so little and so weak, I am stronger than
people think; I never fainted before. My aunt is--how can I say it
properly?--hard to get on with since that time. Is there something
wicked in my nature? I do believe she feels in the same way towards me.
Yes; I dare say it’s imagination, but it’s as bad as reality for all
that. Oh, I am sure you are right--she does want to keep Ovid out of my
way!”

“Because she doesn’t like you?” said Miss Minerva. “Is that the only
reason you can think of?”

“What other reason can there be?”

The governess summoned her utmost power of self-restraint. She needed
it, even to speak of the bare possibility of Carmina’s marriage to Ovid,
as if it was only a matter of speculative interest to herself.

“Some people object to marriages between cousins,” she said. “You
are cousins. Some people object to marriages between Catholics and
Protestants. You are a Catholic--” No! She could not trust herself to
refer to him directly; she went on to the next sentence. “And there
might be some other reason,” she resumed.

“Do you know what that is?” Carmina asked.

“No more than you do--thus far.”

She spoke the plain truth. Thanks to the dog’s interruption, and to the
necessity of saving herself from discovery, the last clauses of the Will
had been read in her absence.

“Can’t you even guess what it is?” Carmina persisted.

“Mrs. Gallilee is very ambitious,” the governess replied: “and her son
has a fortune of his own. She may wish him to marry a lady of high
rank. But--no--she is always in need of money. In some way, money may be
concerned in it.”

“In what way?” Carmina asked.

“I have already told you,” Miss Minerva answered, “that I don’t know.”

Before the conversation could proceed, they were interrupted by the
appearance of Mrs. Gallilee’s maid, with a message from the schoolroom.
Miss Maria wanted a little help in her Latin lesson. Noticing Carmina’s
letter, as she advanced to the door, it struck Miss Minerva that the
woman might deliver it. “Is Mrs. Gallilee at home?” she asked. Mrs.
Gallilee had just gone out. “One of her scientific lectures, I suppose,”
 said Miss Minerva to Carmina. “Your note must wait till she comes back.”

The door closed on the governess--and the lady’s-maid took a liberty.
She remained in the room; and produced a morsel of folded paper,
hitherto concealed from view. Smirking and smiling, she handed the paper
to Carmina.

“From Mr. Ovid, Miss.”




CHAPTER XVII.

“Pray come to me; I am waiting for you in the garden of the Square.”

In those two lines, Ovid’s note began and ended. Mrs. Gallilee’s
maid--deeply interested in an appointment which was not without
precedent in her own experience--ventured on an expression of sympathy,
before she returned to the servants’ hall. “Please to excuse me, Miss;
I hope Mr. Ovid isn’t ill? He looked sadly pale, I thought. Allow me to
give you your hat.” Carmina thanked her, and hurried downstairs.

Ovid was waiting at the gate of the Square--and he did indeed look
wretchedly ill.

It was useless to make inquiries; they only seemed to irritate him. “I
am better already, now you have come to me.” He said that, and led the
way to a sheltered seat among the trees. In the later evening-time the
Square was almost empty. Two middle-aged ladies, walking up and down
(who considerately remembered their own youth, and kept out of the way),
and a boy rigging a model yacht (who was too closely occupied to notice
them), were the only persons in the enclosure besides themselves.

“Does my mother know that you have come here?” Ovid asked.

“Mrs. Gallilee has gone out. I didn’t stop to think of it, when I got
your letter. Am I doing wrong?”

Ovid took her hand. “Is it doing wrong to relieve me of anxieties that I
have no courage to endure? When we meet in the house either my mother or
her obedient servant, Miss Minerva, is sure to interrupt us. At last, my
darling, I have got you to myself! You know that I love you. Why can’t I
look int

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