This enthusiastic commendation, so unexpected by Phillida, who had felt herself in some sense under the ban of her family, brought to the parched and thirsty heart the utmost refreshment. She trembled visibly, and tears appeared in her eyes.

"Thank you, Philip. I know the praise is not deserved, but your kindness does me no end of good."

Mrs. Gouverneur came in at this moment. Phillida's eyes and Philip's constraint showed her that something confidential had passed between them, and she congratulated herself on the success of her plan, though she could not divine the nature of the conversation. Phillida would not be a brilliant match for Philip in a worldly point of view, but it had long been a ruling principle with Mrs. Gouverneur that whatever Philip wanted he was to have, if it were procurable, and as the husband of such a woman as Phillida he ought to be a great deal happier than in mousing among old books and moping over questions that nobody could solve. Besides, Phillida possessed one qualification second to no other in Mrs. Gouverneur's opinion—there could be no question that her family was a first-rate one, at least upon the mother's side. The intrusion of a third person at this moment produced a little constraint. To relieve this Mrs. Gouverneur felt bound to talk of something.

"I scold Philip for wasting his time over old books and such trifles," she said to Phillida. "I wish you could persuade him out of it."

"Trifles!" exclaimed Philip. "Trifles are the only real consolation of such beings as we are. They keep us from being crushed by the immensities. If we were to spend our time chiefly about the momentous things, life would become unendurable."

The conversation drifted to indifferent subjects, and Philip talked with an unwonted gayety that caused Phillida to forget her anxieties, while Mrs. Gouverneur wondered what change had come over her son that he should feel so much elation. The confidence and affection that Phillida had exhibited while conversing with him this evening consoled Philip for the misery of having to live, and his cheerfulness lasted throughout her visit. At its close he walked towards her home, with her hand upon his arm, in an atmosphere of hope which he had not been accustomed to breathe. At the door Phillida said:

"Good-night, Cousin Philip. Thank you for the kind advice you have given me. I don't think I shall agree with it, but I'll think about it." Then in a low voice she added, "If I have made a mistake it has cost me dear—nobody knows how dear."

After he had left her Philip's buoyancy declined. These last words, evidently full of regrets as regarded her relation with Charley, gave him a twinge of his old jealousy and restored him to his habitual discouragement.



XXXI.

A CASE OF BELIEF IN DIPHTHERIA.

It was inevitable that Phillida should turn Philip's talk over in her mind again and again. There were moments when she felt that her healing power might be as much of a delusion as the divinity in the touch of the merry King Charles. There were other times when Dr. Beswick's infecting bacteria germinated in her imagination and threatened destruction to her faith, and yet other times when sheer repulsion from Miss Bowyer's cant of metaphysical and Christian therapeutics inclined her to renounce the belief in faith-cure, which seemed somehow a second cousin to this grotesque science. But the great barrier remained; in her mind faith-healing had associated itself with other phases of religious belief, and she could find no resting-place for her feet betwixt her faith and Philip's ill-concealed general skepticism. She did go so far as to adopt Philip's opinion that an exclusive occupation of the mind with the immensities rendered life unendurable. She came to envy her cousin his eagerness over unreadable Indian Bibles, black-letter Caxtons, and a rare date on a title-page. She envied Millard the diversion that came to him from his interest in people, his taste in dress, his care for the small proprieties, his love for all the minor graces of life. Why should she alone of the three be crushed beneath the trip-hammer of the immensities? But she ended always as she had begun, by reverting to that ancestral spirit of religious strenuousness in which she had been bred and cradled, and by planting herself once more upon the eleventh of Hebrews and the renowned victories of faith that had been the glory of the Church in every age. To leave this ground seemed to her an abandonment by consequence of all that was dearest and noblest in life. Nor was she aware that with each cross-examination her hold on the cherished belief became less firm.

About two weeks after her talk with Philip she had just concluded a fresh conflict of this sort, and settled herself once more in what she intended should hereafter prove an unwavering faith in the efficacy of prayer, at least in certain cases, even against all sorts of bacteria, when it was announced that Mr. Martin wished to see her. It was eight o'clock, and the evening was a raw and rainy one in March.

"Howdy do, Miss Callender? How's all with you?" said Martin, when Phillida appeared at the door.

"How do you do, Mr. Martin?" she said. "Won't you come in?"

"No, thank you," said Martin, standing shivering in the vestibule, his solemn face looking neither more nor less like mortuary sculpture than it ever did. "Mother wants to know if you won't come down right away this evening. Our Tommy is seemingly sick."

"Seemingly sick?" asked Phillida. "How do you mean?"

"He's got a belief in a sore throat," said Mr. Martin, "and he's seemingly not well. Mother'd like to see you."

After a moment of puzzled thought Phillida comprehended that this way of speaking of disease was a part of the liturgy of Christian Science. She could not persuade Mr. Martin into the parlor; he waited in the vestibule while she got ready to go. Once out on the wet sidewalk he said:

"It's all the fault of the infant-class teacher, down at the Mission."

"What is the fault of the infant-class teacher, Mr. Martin?" asked Phillida with some surprise.

"This seeming sore throat of Tommy's."

"How can that be? I don't understand."

"Well, you see she talked to the children last Sunday about swearing and other such sins of speech. Now sin and disease are cor—what-you-may-call-it. Tommy he came home with that big head of his running on the talk about swearing, and in two days here he is with a—a belief in a sore throat. If I had my way I'd take the children out of Sunday-school. But mother will have her own way, you know, and I ain't anywhere when it comes to anything like that."

Phillida said nothing in reply to this, and presently Mr. Martin began again:

"It ain't my doing, the getting you to come and pray for Tommy. I wanted somebody ruther more scientific; Miss Bowyer she knows the cause and effect of things. But mother ain't enlightened yet, and she declared up and down against Miss Bowyer. And I declared up and down against doctors that can only cure sickness on the mortal plane. So, you see, we comp'omised on you. But I let mother know that if she would be so obs'inate ag'inst Miss Bowyer I wa'n't risponsible for the consequences; they'd be on her head. She can't say that I'm risponsible."

Phillida shuddered, and made a motion as of drawing her sack more closely about her.

"Though for that matter," Martin went on, "Tommy's kind of settled the thing himself. He declared up and down that he didn't want Miss Bowyer, and he declared up and down he didn't want a man doctor. What he wanted was Dick's Sunday-school teacher. And neither one of us kind of liked to refuse him anything, seeing he's sick; and so that kind of settled it. And so the risponsibility'll be—I don't know where—unless it's on you."

Phillida found Tommy in a state of restlessness and dullness, complaining of difficulty in swallowing. Mrs. Martin was uneasy lest there should be something malignant about the attack; but to Phillida the case seemed an ordinary one, not likely to prove serious. She held Tommy in her arms for a while and this was a solace to the little fellow. Then she prayed with him, and at half-past nine she returned home leaving Tommy sleeping quietly. When she neared her own door she suddenly bethought her that she had not seen the other children. She turned to Mr. Martin, who was walking by her side in silence and with a measured stride that would have been very becoming to an undertaker, but with which Phillida found it quite impossible to keep step.

"I didn't see the rest of the children, Mr. Martin; where are they?" she asked.

"Well, a neighbor acrost the street come over to-day and took 'em away. She didn't know but it might be dip'thery."

"Have you had any diphtheria in your neighborhood?"

"Well, yes; the caretaker of our flats down on the first floor of the next house lost a child last week by a belief in dip'thery. The neighbor acrost the street thought Tommy might have got it, but we didn't believe it. But it made mother kind of uneasy, and she wanted to see you or a doctor to-night. For my part, I knew that it was the talk of the infant-class teacher that was at the bottom of it, dip'thery or not. Sin oughtn't to be mentioned to a child. It's likely to break out into a belief about sickness."

Phillida's spirits suddenly sank to zero. Alarm at the responsibility she had taken got the better of her faith by surprise, and she said:

"Mr. Martin, get a doctor. It may be diphtheria."

"Why, what if it is?" said Mr. Martin. "It's better to treat it on a spiritual plane. No, I'm not a-going back on my faith in the very words of the Bible."

"But, Mr. Martin, I don't feel sure enough to want to be responsible for Tommy's life. You must get a doctor as you go home. You go almost past Dr. Beswick's in Seventeenth street."

"No, I won't do that; I'd made up my mind already that your treatment wa'n't thorough enough. You haven't had the experience; you haven't studied the nature of disease and the cor-what-you-may-call-it between sin and sickness. I'll call Miss Bowyer if Tommy don't mend before morning."

Just then it began to rain again. The sudden plash of the downpour and Phillida's instinctive impulse to get quickly under shelter interrupted the conversation. A minute later Miss Callender was standing in the vestibule with a weeping umbrella in her hand, while she heard Mr. Martin's retreating footsteps, no whit hurried by the fitful gusts of rain, or the late hour, or the illness at home.

She thought of running after him, but of what use would that be, seeing his obstination against treating diseases on the mortal plane? She would have liked to go home with him and beg the mother to send for a doctor; but she could not feel sure that this would serve the purpose, and while she debated the rain came on in driving torrents, and the steady beat of Mr. Martin's steps was lost in the distance and the rush of waters. In vain she told her mother that the child did not seem very ill, in vain she told herself during the night that Tommy had only an ordinary cold. She was restless and wakeful the night long; two or three times she lighted a match and looked at the slow-going clock on the mantelpiece.

In that hour unbelief in the validity of her cures came into her mind with a rush that bore down all barriers before it. Her mind went over to Dr. Beswick's side of the question, and she saw her success in some cases as the mere effect on the nervous system. In the bitterness of something like despair she thought herself a deluded and culpable enthusiast, worthy of ridicule, of contempt, of condemnation. There were no longer any oscillations of her mind toward the old belief; the foundations of sand had been swept away, and there was no space to make a reconstruction. Scarcely could she pray; unbelief tardily admitted threatened to revenge itself for the long siege by sacking the whole city. She was almost ready to plunge into Philip's general skepticism, which had seemed hitherto a horrible abyss. At a quarter to five o'clock she lighted the gas, turning it low so as not to disturb the others. She dressed herself quickly, then she wrote a little note in which she said:

I am uneasy about Mrs. Martin's child, and have gone down there. Back to breakfast. PHILLIDA.

This she pinned to Agatha's stocking, so that it would certainly be seen. Then she threw an old gray shawl over her hat, drawing it about her head, in order to look as much as possible like a tenement-house dweller running an early morning errand, hoping thus to escape the curiosity that a well-dressed lady might encounter if seen on the street at so early an hour. The storm and the clouds had gone, but the air was moist from the recent rain. When she sallied forth no dawn was perceptible, though the street lamps were most of them already out. Just as the sky above Greenpoint began to glow and the reeking streets took on a little gray, Phillida entered the stairway up which she stumbled in black darkness to the Martin apartment.

The Martins were already up, and breakfast was cooking on the stove.

"Is that you, Miss Callender?" said Mrs. Martin. "I didn't expect you at this hour. How did you get here alone?"

"Oh, well enough," said Phillida. "But how is little Tommy?"

"I'm afraid he is worse. I was just trying to persuade Mr. Martin to go for you."

"I came to give up the case," said Phillida, hurriedly, "and to beg you to get a doctor. I have done with faith-cures. I've lost my faith in them entirely, and I'm afraid from what Mr. Martin told me last night that this is diphtheria."

"I hope not," said Mrs. Martin, in renewed alarm.

Mr. Martin, who was shaving in his shirt-sleeves near the window, only turned about when he got the lather off his face to say: "Good-morning, Miss Callender. How's things with you?"

Phillida returned this with the slightest good-morning. She was out of patience with Mr. Martin, and she was revolving a plan for discovering whether Tommy's distemper were diphtheria or not. During her long midnight meditations she had gone over every word of Dr. Beswick's about bacteria and bacilli. She remembered his statement that the micrococcus diphtheriticus was to be found in the light-colored patches visible in the throat of a diphtheria patient. At what stage these were developed she did not know, but during her hours of waiting for morning she had imagined herself looking down little Tommy's throat. She now asked for a spoon, and, having roused Tommy from a kind of stupor, she inserted the handle as she had seen physicians do, and at length succeeded in pressing down the tongue so as to discover what she took to be diphtheria patches on the fauces.

"Mrs. Martin, I am sure this is diphtheria. You must get a doctor right away."

"I'll attend to that," said Mr. Martin, who had now got his beard off and his coat on.

As he donned his hat and went out the door, Mrs. Martin called: "Father, you'd better get Dr. Beswick"; but her husband made no reply further than to say, "I'll attend to that," without interrupting for a moment his steady tramp down the stairs.

"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Martin, "that he has gone for Miss Bowyer."

"I hope not," said Phillida.

"If he gets her he'll be awfully stubborn. He has been offended that I sent for you last night. It touches his dignity. He thinks that if he doesn't have his way in certain things he is put out of his place as head of the family."

Phillida presently perceived that Mrs. Martin was shedding tears of apprehension.

"My poor little Tommy! I shall lose him."

"Oh, no; I hope not," said Phillida.

But Mrs. Martin shook her head.

In about half an hour Henry Martin, with a look that came near to being more than usually solemn, ushered in Dr. Eleanor Arabella Bowyer, and then sat himself down to his breakfast, which was on the table, without a word, except to ask Phillida if she wouldn't have breakfast, too, which invitation was declined.

Miss Bowyer nodded to Phillida, saying, "Your case?"

"No," said Phillida; "I have no case. This is a case of diphtheria."

"Case of belief in diphtheria?" queried Miss Bowyer, and without waiting for an invitation she calmly poured out a cup of coffee and drank it, standing. When she had finished the coffee and was ready for business, Phillida said:

"Miss Bowyer, let me speak with you a moment." She drew the psychopathic healer over toward a large old-fashioned bureau that the Martins had brought from the country and that seemed not to have room enough for its ancient and simple dignity in its present close quarters. "Miss Bowyer, this is diphtheria. A child in the next house died last week of the same disease. Mrs. Martin wishes to call a doctor, a regular doctor. Don't you think you ought to give way to her wish?"

"Not at all. The father is enlightened, and I am thankful for that. He knows the mighty power of Christian Science, and he does not wish to have his child treated on the mortal plane. Parents often differ this way, and I am sometimes supported by only one of them. But I never give way on that account. It's a great and glorious work that must be pushed."

"But if the child should die?" urged Phillida.

"It's not half so apt to die if treated on the spiritual plane; and if it dies we'll know that we have done all that opportunity offered. In all such cases the true physician can only commend the patient to the care of a loving Providence, feeling assured that disorder has its laws and limitations and that suffering is a means of developing the inner nature."

Having reeled this off like a phrase often spoken, Miss Bowyer walked over to the bed where the little lad lay.

"Miss Bowyer," said Mrs. Martin, with an earnestness born of her agony, "I don't believe in your treatment at all."

"That's not necessary," said the doctor with a jaunty firmness; "the faith of one parent is sufficient to save the sick."

"This is my child, and I wish you to leave him alone," said Mrs. Martin.

"I am called by the child's father, Mrs. Martin, and I can not shirk my responsibility in this case."

"Please leave my house. I don't want you here," said Mrs. Martin, with an excitement almost hysterical. "I believe you are an impostor."

"I've often been called that," said Miss Bowyer, with a winning smile. "Used to it. One has to bear reproach and persecution in a Christian spirit for the sake of a good cause. You are only delaying the cure of your child, and perhaps risking his precious life."

"Henry," said Mrs. Martin, "I want you to send this woman away and get a doctor."

"Hannah, I'm the head of this family," said Martin, dropping his chin and looking ludicrously impressive. But as a matter of precaution he thought it best to leave the conflict to be fought out by Miss Bowyer. He feared that if he stayed he might find himself deposed from the only leadership that had ever fallen to his lot in life. So he executed a strategic move by quitting his breakfast half-finished and hurrying away to the shop.

Miss Bowyer was now exultingly confident that nothing short of force and a good deal of it could dislodge a person of her psychic endurance from the post of duty.

She began to apply her hands to Tommy's neck, but as there was external soreness, the little lad wakened and cried for his mother and "the teacher," as he called Phillida.

Mrs. Martin approached him and said: "Miss Bowyer, this is my child; stand aside."

"Not at all, Mrs. Martin. You are doing your child harm, and you ought to desist. If you continue to agitate him in this way the consequences will be fatal."

Certainly an affray over Tommy's bed was not desirable; the more so that no force at present available could expel the tenacious scientist. Phillida, who somehow felt frightfully accountable for the state of affairs, beckoned Mrs. Martin to the landing at the top of the stairs, closing the door of the apartment behind them. But even there the hoarse and piteous crying of Tommy rent the hearts of both of them.

"You must send for Mr. Millard," said Phillida. "He will have authority with Mr. Martin, and he will know how to get rid of her," pointing through the door in the direction in which they had left Miss Bowyer bending over the patient.

"There is nobody to send," answered Mrs. Martin, in dismay.

"I will send," said Phillida. They re-entered the room, and Phillida put on her sack in haste, seizing her hat and hurrying down the long flight of stairs into Avenue C, where the sidewalks, steaming after the yesterday's rain, were peopled by men on their way to work, and by women and children seeking the grocery-stores and butcher-shops. Loiterers were already gathering, in that slouching fashion characteristic of people out of work, about the doors of the drinking-saloons; buildings whose expensive up-fittings lent a touch of spurious grandeur to the pinched and populous avenue.



XXXII.

FACE TO FACE.

Once in the street, Phillida's perplexities began. She had undertaken to send for Millard, but there were no slow-footed district Mercuries to be had in the Mackerelville part of New York. It was now barely half-past six, and Millard would hardly have risen yet. In a battle against grim death and Miss Bowyer time seemed all important. She therefore took a Fourteenth street car and changed to an up-town line carrying her to the vicinity of the Graydon, debating all the way how quickest to get an explicit message to Millard without a personal interview, which would be painful to both, and which might be misconstrued. Phillida alighted from the car in the neighborhood of the Graydon, whose mountainous dimensions deflected the March wind into sudden and disagreeable backsets and whirling eddies that threatened the perpendicularity of foot-passengers. She requested a florist, who was opening his shop and arranging a little exhibition of the hardier in-door plants on the sidewalk, to direct her to a district telegraph office, and was referred to one just around the corner. To this always open place she walked as rapidly as possible, to find a sleepy-looking young woman just settling herself at the desk, having at that moment relieved the man who had been on duty all night.

"Can you give me a messenger right away?" she demanded.

"In about fifteen or twenty minutes we'll have one in," said the girl. "We don't keep but two on duty at this hour, and they're both out, and there's one call ahead of you. Take a seat, won't you?"

But Phillida saw in her imagination Mrs. Martin badgered by Eleanor Bowyer, and heard again the grievous cry of the frightened and suffering Tommy. After all, she could only make the matter understood imperfectly by means of a message. Why should she stand on delicacy in a matter of life and death? She reflected that there was no animosity between her and Millard, and she recalled his figure as he reached his hand to her that fatal evening, and she remembered the emotion in his voice when he said, "Part friends?" She resolved to go in person to the Graydon.

The entrance to the apartment building displayed a good deal of that joint-stock grandeur which goes for much and yet costs each individual householder but little. Despite her anxiety, Phillida was so far impressed by the elaborate bronze mantelpiece over the great hall fireplace, the carved wooden seats, and the frescoing and gilding of the walls, as to remember that she was dressed for a tenement in Avenue C, and not for a west-side apartment house. The gray shawl she had left behind; but she felt sure that the important-looking hall boys and, above all, the plump and prosperous-seeming clerk at the desk, with an habitually neutral expression upon his countenance, must wonder why a woman had intruded into the sacred front entrance in so plain a hat and gown at seven o'clock in the morning. She felt in her pocket for her card-case, but of course that had been left in the pocket of a better dress, and she must write upon one of those little cards that the house furnishes; and all this while the clerk would be wondering who she was. But there was a native self-reliance about Phillida that shielded her from contempt. She asked for the card, took up a pen, and wrote:

"Miss Callender wishes to see Mr. Millard in great haste, on a matter of the utmost importance."

She was about to put this into an envelope, but she reflected that an open message was better. She handed the card to the clerk, who took it hesitatingly, and with a touch of "style" in his bearing, saying, "Mr. Millard will not be down for half an hour yet. He is not up. Will you wait?"

"He must be called," said Phillida. "It is a matter of life and death."

The clerk still held the note in his hand.

"He will be very much annoyed if that is not delivered to him at once. It is his own affair, and, as I said, a matter of life and death," said Phillida, speaking peremptorily, her courage rising to the occasion.

The clerk still held the note. He presently beckoned to a negro boy sitting on one of the carved benches.

"Washington," he said.

Washington came forward to the counter.

"Wash," said the clerk in an undertone—an undress tone kept for those upon whom it would have been useless to waste his habitual bearing as the representative of the corporate proprietorship of the building—"has Mr. Millard's man come in yet?"

"No, sir."

"Take this up to seventy-nine, and say that the lady is below and insists on his being called at once." Then to Phillida, as the form of Washington vanished upward by way of the marble staircase, "Will you take a seat in the reception-room?" waving his hand slightly in the direction of a portiere, behind which Phillida found herself in the ladies' reception-room.

In ten minutes Millard came down the elevator, glanced about the office, and then quickly entered the reception-room. There were unwonted traces of haste in his toilet; his hair had been hastily brushed, but it had been brushed, as indeed it would probably have been if Washington had announced that the Graydon was in flames.

There was a moment of embarrassment. What manner was proper for such a meeting? It would not do to say "Phillida," and "Miss Callender" would sound forced and formal. Phillida was equally embarrassed as she came forward, but Millard's tact relieved the tension. He spoke in a tone of reserve and yet of friendliness.

"Good-morning. I hope no disaster has happened to you." The friendly eagerness of this inquiry took off the brusqueness of omitting her name, and the anxiety that prompted it was sincere.

"There is no time for explanations," said Phillida, hurriedly. "Mr. Martin has called a Christian Science healer to see Tommy, who is very ill with diphtheria."

"Tommy has diphtheria?" said Millard, his voice showing feeling.

"Your aunt wants a doctor," continued Phillida, "but Mr. Martin has left the woman in charge, and she refuses to give up the case. Tommy is crying, and Mrs. Martin is in a horrible position and wants to see you." Here Phillida's eyes fell as she added, "There was nobody to send; I couldn't get a messenger; and so I had to come myself."

"I am glad—" here Millard paused and began over—"You did the best thing to come yourself. You will excuse me, but I don't understand. You haven't charge of the case at all, then?"

"No, no, Charley—Mr. Millard; there is no time to explain. Get a good doctor, and put Miss Bowyer out, if you have to fetch a policeman. Get a good doctor at once. If you save the child you must be quick, quick! The horrible woman will be the death of him."

Millard caught the infection of urgency and began to take in the situation. He stepped to the door, drew aside the portiere, and said:

"Washington, call a coupe for me. Quick, now." Then he called after the boy as he went to the telephone, "Tell them to hurry it up."

He turned towards Phillida; then with a new impulse he turned again and walked impatiently to the office. "Mr. Oliver, won't you ask if my man is below, and send him here as quickly as possible?"

The clerk moved, without ruffling his dignity by undue haste, to the speaking-tube which communicated with the basement. In the course of half a minute a young Englishman, with a fore-and-aft cap in his hand, came running to the reception-room, in the door of which Millard was standing.

"Robert," said Millard, "run to the stable and have them send my coupe on the jump. Come back with it yourself."

The well-trained Robert glided swiftly out of the front door, not even asking a question with his eyes.

"You'll go back with me in the coupe?" Millard said to Phillida, who had risen and now stood waiting in embarrassment to say good-morning.

Phillida could not for a moment think of driving back with Millard, not so much on account of the conventional impropriety in it as because her visit was capable of misconstruction; and while she believed that Millard knew her too well to put any interpretation of self-interest on her coming, she could not have brought herself to return to Avenue C in his coupe. If for no other reason, she would have declined in order to avoid prolonging an interview painful and embarrassing to both. She was worn and faint from the fatigues of the night and the excitement of the morning, and she could not think of the right thing to say.

"No; I will go home," she said. Spoken thus, without calling him by name, the words had a severe sound, as of one mortally offended. A sudden access of fatigue and faintness reminded her that she had eaten nothing this morning.

"You will excuse me. I've had no breakfast yet. I've been at Mrs. Martin's since daylight. Good-morning, Mr. Millard."

This explanation made her perfectly proper refusal somewhat less abrupt and direct; but the words were still cold and severe.

"I will call another coupe, and send you home. You are faint," he said.

"No, thank you," she said, and went out.

But Millard followed her into the street, and hailed a car, and assisted her to enter it, and lifted his hat and bowed in response to her "Thank you," when she had gained the platform. As the car moved away he stood a moment looking after it, and then returned toward the sidewalk, saying softly to himself, "By Jove, what a woman! What a woman that is!"



XXXIII.

A FAMOUS VICTORY.

By the time the coupe reached the curb in front of the Graydon, Millard had fixed in his mind the first move in his campaign, and had scribbled a little note as he stood at the clerk's counter in the office. Handing the driver a dollar as a comprehensible hint that speed was required, and, taking Robert with him, he was soon bowling along the yet rather empty Fifth Avenue. He alighted in front of a rather broad, low-stoop, brownstone house, with a plain sign upon it, which read "Dr. Augustine Gunstone." What ills and misfortunes had crossed that door-stone! What celebrities had here sought advice from the great doctor in matters of life and death! Few men can enjoy a great reputation and be so unspoiled as Dr. Gunstone. The shyest young girl among his patients felt drawn to unburden her sorrows to him as to a father; the humblest sufferer remembered gratefully the reassuring gentleness of his voice and manner. But Millard made no reflections this morning; he rang the bell sharply.

"The doctor hasn't come down yet," said the servant. "He will not see patients before nine o'clock."

"At what time does he come down?"

"At a quarter to eight."

"It's half-past seven now," said Millard. "Kindly take this note to his room with my card, and say that I wait for an answer."

There was that in Millard's manner that impressed the servant. He was sure that this must be one of those very renowned men who sometimes came to see Dr. Gunstone and who were not to be refused. He ran up the stairs and timidly knocked at the doctor's door. Millard waited five minutes in a small reception-room, and then the old doctor came down, kindly, dignified, unruffled as ever, a man courteous to all, friendly with all, but without any familiars.

"Good-morning, Mr. Millard. I can't see your patient now. Every moment of my time to-day is engaged. Perhaps I might contrive to see the child on my way to the hospital at twelve."

"If I could have a carriage here at the moment you finish your breakfast, with my valet in it to see that no time is lost, could you give us advice, and get back here before your office hours begin?"

Dr. Gunstone hesitated a moment. "Yes," he said; "but you would want a doctor in the vicinity. I can not come often enough to take charge of the case."

"We'll call any one you may name. The family are poor, I am interested in them, they are relatives of mine, and this child I have set my heart on saving, and I will not mind expense. I wish you to come every day as consultant, if possible."

Dr. Gunstone's was a professional mind before all. He avoided those profound questions of philosophy toward which modern science propels the mind, limiting himself to the science of pathology and the art of healing. On the other hand, he habitually bounded his curiosity concerning his patients to their physical condition and such of their surroundings as affected for good or ill their chances of recovery. He did not care to know more of this poor family than that he was to see a patient there; but he knew something of Millard from the friendly relations existing between him and younger members of his own family, and the disclosure that Millard had kinsfolk in Avenue C, and was deeply interested in people of a humble rank, gave Dr. Gunstone a momentary surprise, which, however, it would have been contrary to all his habits to manifest. He merely bowed a polite good-morning and turned toward the breakfast-room.

These men, in whose lives life and death are matters of hourly business—matters of bread and butter and bank-account—acquire in self-defense a certain imperviousness; they learn to shed their responsibilities with facility in favor of digestion and sleep. Dr. Gunstone ate in a leisurely way, relishing his chops and coffee, and participating in the conversation of the family, who joined him one by one at the table. It did not trouble him that another family in Avenue C was in agonized waiting for his presence, and that haste or delay might make the difference between life and death to a human being. This was not heartlessness, but a condition of his living and working—a postponement of particular service, however important, in favor of the general serviceableness of his life.

Millard was not sorry for the delay; it gave him time to dispose of Miss Bowyer.

Seeing that Phillida had gone to seek re-enforcements, Mrs. Martin had concluded that, in Tommy's interest, a truce would be the better thing. So, while Miss Bowyer was seeking to induce in little Tommy the impressible conscious state—or, to be precise, the conscious, passive, impressible state—Mrs. Martin offered to hold him in her arms. To this the metaphysical healer assented with alacrity, as likely to put the child into a favorable condition for the exercise of her occult therapeutic powers.

"Hold him with his back to the north, Mrs. Martin," she said; "there, in a somewhat reclining posture; that will increase his susceptibility to psychic influence. There is no doubt that the magnetism of the earth has a polar distribution. It is quite probable also that the odylic emanation of the terrestrial magnet has also a polar arrangement. Does the little fellow ever turn round in his bed at night?"

"Yes."

"That shows that he is sensitive to magnetic influences. He is trying to get himself north and south, so as to bring the body into harmony with the magnetic poles of the earth. You see the brain is normally positive. We wish to invert the poles of the body, and send the magnetism of the brain to the feet."

Miss Bowyer now took out a small silver cross and held it up before the child a little above the natural range of vision.

"Will you look at this, little boy?" she said.

She did her best to make her naturally unsympathetic voice persuasive, even to pronouncing the last word of her entreaty "baw-ee." But the "little baw-ee" was faint with sickness, and he only lifted his eyes a moment to the trinket, and then closed the eyelids and turned his face toward his mother's bosom.

"Come, little baw-ee. Look at this, my child. Isn't it pretty? Little baw-ee, see here!"

But the little baw-ee wanted rest, and he showed no signs of having heard Miss Bowyer's appeal, except that he fretted with annoyance after each sentence she addressed to him.

"That is bad," said Miss Bowyer, seeing that Tommy would not look. "If I could get him to strain the eyes upward for five minutes, while I gazed at him and concentrated my mind on the act of gazing, I should be able to produce what is known in psychopathic science as the conscious impressible state—something resembling hypnotism, but stopping short of the unconscious state. I could make him forget his disease by willing forgetfulness. I must try another plan."

Miss Bowyer now sat and gazed on the child, who was half-slumbering. For five minutes she sat there like a cat ready to jump at the first movement of a moribund mouse. Apparently she was engaged in concentrating her mind on the act of gazing.

"Now," she said to Mrs. Martin in a whisper—for explication was a necessity of Miss Bowyer's nature, or perhaps essential to the potency of her measures—"now I will gently place the right hand on the fore brain and the left over the cerebellum, willing the vital force of the cerebrum to retreat backward to the cerebellum. This is the condition of the brain in the somnambulic state and in ordinary sleep. The right hand, you must know, acts from without inward, while the left acts from within outward." She suited the action to the words; but Tommy did not take kindly to the action of her right hand from without inward, or else he was annoyed by the action of the left hand from within outward. Evidently Miss Bowyer's positive and negative poles failed to harmonize with his. He put up his hands to push away her positive and negative poles; but finding that impossible, he kicked and cried in a way which showed him to be utterly out of harmony with the odylic emanations of the terrestrial magnet.

With these and other mummeries Miss Bowyer proceeded during all the long hour and a quarter that intervened between Phillida's departure and the arrival of the reinforcement. Miss Bowyer was wondering meanwhile what could have been the nature of Phillida's conference outside the door with Mrs. Martin, and whether Mrs. Martin were sufficiently convinced of her skill by this time for her to venture to leave the place presently to meet certain office patients whom she expected. But she concluded to run no risks of defeat; she had left word at her office that she had been called to see a patient dangerously ill, and such a report would do her reputation no harm.

Mrs. Martin was driven to the very verge of distraction by the sense of Tommy's danger and the necessity she was under of suppressing her feelings while this woman, crank or impostor, held possession of the child and of her house. Not to disturb Tommy, she affected a peaceful attitude toward the professor of Christian sorcery, whom, in the anguish of her spirit, she would have liked to project out of a window into the dizzy space occupied by pulleys and clothes-lines. Footsteps came and went past her door, but there was as yet no interruption to Miss Bowyer's pow-wow. At length there came a step on the stairs, and a rap. Mrs. Martin laid Tommy on the bed and opened the door. Charley beckoned her to be silent and to come out.

"What is the name of the faith-healer, Aunt Hannah?" he whispered.

"Miss Bowyer."

"Does she still refuse to leave?"

"Oh, yes! She declares she will not leave."

"You want her out?"

"Yes; I want a doctor," said Mrs. Martin, giving her hands a little wring.

"Tell Miss Bowyer that there is a gentleman outside the door who wishes to see her. Whenever the door is shut, do you fasten it inside."

"Miss Bowyer, there's a gentleman inquiring for you outside," said Mrs. Martin when she returned.

Miss Bowyer opened the door suspiciously, standing in the doorway as she spoke.

"Did you wish to see me?"

"Are you Miss Bowyer?"

"Yes,"—with a wave inflection, as though half inquiring.

"Are you the Christian Scientist?"

"Yes," said Miss Bowyer, "I am."

"This is a case of diphtheria, isn't it?"

"It's a case of belief in diphtheria. I have no doubt I shall be able to reduce the morbid action soon. The child is already in the state of interior perception," she said, seeing in Millard a possible patient, and coming a little further out of the door.

"It's catching, I believe," said Millard. "Would you mind closing the door a moment while I speak with you?"

Miss Bowyer peered into the room to see Mrs. Martin giving Tommy a drink. Feeling secure, she softly closed the door, keeping hold of the handle. Then she turned to Millard.

"Did you wish to see me professionally?" she asked.

"Well," said Millard, "I think you might call it professionally. I live over on the west side. Do you know where the Graydon apartment building is?"

"Yes, oh, yes; I attended a patient near there once, in one of the brownstone houses on the other side of the street. He got well beautifully."

"Well, I live in the Graydon," said Millard.

"Yes," said Miss Bowyer, with a rising inflection, wondering what could be the outcome of this roundabout talk. "Is some member of your family sick?" she asked.

A bolt clicked behind the metaphysical healer, who turned with the alarm of a trapped mouse and essayed to push the door. Then, remembering what seemed more profitable game in front, she repeated her question, but in a ruffled tone, "Some member of your family?"

Charley laughed in spite of himself.

"Not of my family, but a relative," he said. "It is my cousin who is sick in this room, and I called to get you outside of the door. I beg your pardon for the seeming rudeness."

Miss Bowyer now pushed on the door in vain.

"You think this is a gentlemanly way to treat a lady?" she said, choking with indignation.

"It doesn't seem handsome, does it?" he said. "But do you think you have treated Mrs. Martin in a ladylike way?"

"I was called by her husband," she said.

"You are now dismissed by the wife."

"I will see Mr. Martin at once, and he will reinstate me."

"You will not see Mr. Martin. I shall not give you a chance. I am going to report you to the County Medical Society and the Board of Health at once. Have you reported this case of diphtheria, as the law requires?"

"No, I have not," said Miss Bowyer; "but I was going to do so to-day."

"I don't like to dispute the word of a lady," he said, "but you know that you are not a proper practitioner, and that in case of a contagious disease the Board of Health would put you out of here neck and heels, if I must speak so roughly. Mrs. Martin is my aunt. If you make any trouble, I shall feel obliged to have you arrested at once. If you go home quietly and do not say a word to Mr. Martin, I'll let you off. You have no doubt lost patients of this kind before, and if I look up your record—"

"My hat and cloak are in there," said Miss Bowyer.

"If you renounce the case and say no more to Mr. Martin I will not follow you up," said Charley; "but turn your hand against Mrs. Martin, and I'll spend a thousand dollars to put you in prison."

This put a new aspect on the case in Miss Bowyer's mind. That Mrs. Martin had influential friends she had not dreamed. Miss Bowyer had had one tilt with the authorities, and she preferred not to try it again.

"My hat and cloak are in there," she repeated, pushing on the door.

"Stand aside," said Millard, "and I will get them."

Somehow Millard had reached Miss Bowyer's interior perception and put her into the conscious, impressible, passive state, in which his will was hers. She moved to the other side of the dark hall in such a state of mind that she could hardly have told whether the magnetism of her brain was in the cerebrum or in the cerebellum or in a state of oscillation between the two.

"Aunt Hannah," called Millard, "open the door."

The bolt was shoved back by Mrs. Martin. Millard opened the door a little way, holding the knob firmly in his right hand. Mrs. Martin stood well out of sight behind the door, from an undefined fear of getting in range of Miss Bowyer, whose calm bullying had put Mrs. Martin into some impassive state not laid down in works on Christian Science.

"Give me Miss Bowyer's hat and cloak," said Millard.

The things were passed out by Mrs. Martin, who, in doing so, exposed nothing but her right hand to the enemy, while Charley took them in his left and passed them to Miss Bowyer.

"Now remember," he said, closing the door and holding it until he heard the bolt shoved to its place again, "if you know what is good for you, you will not make the slightest movement in this case."

"But you will not refuse me my fee," she said. "You have put me out of a case that would have been worth ten or twenty dollars. I shall expect you to pay me something."

Millard hesitated. It might be better not to provoke her too far; but on the other hand, he could not suppress his indignation on his aunt's behalf so far as to give her money.

"Send me your bill, made out explicitly for medical services in this case. Address the cashier of the Bank of Manhadoes. I will pay you if your bill is regularly made out."

Miss Bowyer went down the stairs and into the street. But the more she thought of it the more she was convinced that this demand for a regular bill for medical services from a non-registered practitioner concealed some new device to entrap her. She had had enough of that young man up-stairs, and, much as she disliked the alternative, she thought it best to let her fee go uncollected, unless she could some day collect it quietly from the head of the Martin family. Her magnetism had never before been so much out of harmony with every sort of odylic emanation in the universe as at this moment.



XXXIV.

DOCTORS AND LOVERS.

Faint from the all-night strain upon her feelings, Phillida returned to her home from the Graydon to find her mother and sister at breakfast.

"Philly, you're 'most dead," said Agatha, as Phillida walked wearily into the dining-room by way of the basement door. "You're pale and sick. Here, sit down and take a cup of coffee."

Phillida sat down without removing her bonnet or sack, but Agatha took them off while her mother poured her coffee.

"Where have you been and what made you go off so early?" went on Agatha. "Or did you run away in the night?"

"Let Phillida take her coffee and get rested," said the mother.

"All right, she shall," said Agatha, patting her on the back in a baby-cuddling way. "Only tell me how that little boy is; I do want to know, and you can just say 'better,' 'worse,' 'well,' or 'dead,' without waiting for the effect of the coffee, don't you see?"

"The child has diphtheria. I don't know whether I ought to come home and expose the rest of you."

"Nonsense," said Agatha. "Do you think we're going to send you off to the Island? You take care of the rest of the world, Philly, but mama and I take care of you. When you get up into a private box in heaven as a great saint, we'll hang on to your robe and get good seats."

"Sh-sh," said Phillida, halting between a revulsion at Agatha's irreverent speech and a feeling more painful. "I'll never be a great saint, Aggy. Only a poor, foolish girl, mistaking her fancies for her duty."

"Oh, that's the way with all the great saints. They just missed being shut up for lunatics. But do you think you'll be able to save that little boy? Don't you think you ought to get them to call a doctor?"

"I? Oh, I gave up the case. I'm done with faith-healing once for all, Agatha." This was said with a little gulp, indicating that the confession cost her both effort and pain.

"You—"

"Don't ask me any questions till I'm better able to answer. I'm awfully tired out and cross."

"What have you been doing this morning?" said Agatha, notwithstanding Phillida's injunction against questions.

"Getting Miss Bowyer out of the Martin house. Mr. Martin was determined to have her, and he went for her when his wife sent him for a doctor."

"Miss Bowyer! I don't see how you ever got her out," said Agatha. "Did you get a policeman to put her into the station-house on the mortal plane?"

"No; I did worse. I actually had to go to the Graydon and wake up Charley Millard—"

"You did?"

"Yes; I couldn't get a messenger, and so I went myself. And I put the case into Charley's hands, and he sent his man Friday scampering after a coupe, and I came home and left him to go over there and fight it out."

"Well, I declare!" said Agatha. "What remarkable adventures you have! And I never have anything real nice and dreadful happen to me. But he might have brought you home."

"It wasn't his fault that he didn't. But give me a little bit of steak, please; I have got to go back to the Martins'."

"No, you mustn't. Mother, don't you let her."

"I do wish, Phillida," said the mother, "that you wouldn't go down into the low quarters of the town any more. You're so exposed to disease. And then you're a young woman. You haven't got your father's endurance. It's a dreadful risk."

"Well, I'm rather responsible for the child, and then I ought to be there to protect Mrs. Martin from her husband when he comes home at noon, and to share the blame with her when he finds his favorite put out and Charley's doctor in possession."

"So you and Charley are in partnership in saving the boy's life," said Agatha, "and you've got a regular doctor. That's something like. I can guess what'll come next."

"Hush, Agatha," said the mother.

Phillida's appetite for beefsteak failed in a moment, and she pushed her plate back and looked at her sister with vexation.

"If you think there's going to be a new engagement, you're mistaken."

"Think!" said Agatha, with a provoking laugh, "I don't think anything about it. I know just what's got to happen. You and Charley are just made for each other, though for my part I should prefer a young man something like Cousin Philip."

Phillida was silent for a moment, and Mrs. Callender made a protesting gesture at the impulsive Agatha.

"I don't think you ought to talk about such things when I'm so tired," said Phillida, struggling to maintain self-control. "Mr. Millard is a man used to great popularity and much flattery in society. He would never stand it in the world; it would hurt him twenty years hence to be reminded that his wife had been a—well—a fanatic." This was uttered with a sharp effort of desperation, Phillida grinding a bit of bread to pieces between thumb and finger the meanwhile. "If he were to offer to renew the engagement I should refuse. It would be too mortifying to think of."

Agatha said nothing, and Phillida presently added, "And if you think I went to the Graydon to renew the acquaintance of Charley, it's—very—unkind of you, that's all." Phillida could no longer restrain her tears.

"Why, Phillida, dear, Agatha didn't say any such thing," interposed Mrs. Callender.

"If you think," said Agatha, angrily, "that I could even imagine such a thing as that, it's just too awfully mean, that's all. But you've worried yourself sick and you're unreasonable. There, now, please don't cry, Philly," she added, going around and stroking her sister's hair. "You're too good for any man that ever lived, and that's a great misfortune. If they could have split the difference between your goodness and my badness, they might have made two fair average women. There, now, if you don't eat something I'll blame myself all day. I'm going to toast you a piece of bread."

In spite of remonstrance, the repentant Agatha toasted a piece of bread and boiled the only egg that Sarah had in the house, to tempt her sister's appetite.

"Your motto is, 'Hard words and kind acts,'" said Mrs. Callender, as Agatha came in with the toast and the egg.

"My motto is, 'Hard words and soft boiled eggs,'" said Agatha, who had by this penance secured her own forgiveness and recovered her gayety.

In vain was Phillida entreated to rest. She felt herself drawn to Mrs. Martin, who would, as she concluded, have got rid of Miss Bowyer, and seen the doctor and Charley, and be left alone, by this time. So, promising to be back by one o'clock, if possible, she went out again, indulging her fatigue so far as to take a car in Fourteenth street. Arrived at Mrs. Martin's, she was embarrassed at finding Millard sitting with his aunt. She gave him a look of recognition as she entered, and said to Mrs. Martin, who was holding Tommy:

"I thought I should find you alone by this time."

This indirect statement that she had not considered it desirable to encounter Millard again cut him, and he said, as though the words had been addressed to him, "I am expecting Dr. Gunstone every moment."

"Dr. Gunstone? I am glad he is coming," said Phillida, firing the remark in the air indiscriminately at the aunt or nephew, as either might please to accept it.

At that moment Millard's valet, Robert, in the capacity of pioneer and pilot, knocked at the door. When Millard opened it he said, "Dr. Gunstone, sir," and stood aside to let the physician pass.

Gunstone made a little hurried bow to Millard, and, without waiting for an introduction, bowed with his usual deference to Mrs. Martin. "Good-morning, madam; is this the little sufferer?" at the same time making a hurried bow of courtesy to Phillida as a stranger; but as he did so, he arrested himself and said in the fatherly tone he habitually used with his young women patients, "How do you do? You came to see me last year with—"

"My mother, Mrs. Callender," said Phillida.

"Yes, yes; and how is your mother, my dear?"

"Quite well, thank you, doctor."

The doctor dispatched these courtesies with business-like promptness, and then settled himself to an examination of little Tommy.

"This is diphtheria," he said; "you will want a physician in the neighborhood. Let's see, whom have you?" This to Millard.

Millard turned to his aunt. She looked at Phillida. "There's Dr. Smith around the corner," said Phillida.

Dr. Gunstone said, "Dr. Smith?" inquiringly to himself. But the name did not seem to recall any particular Smith.

"And Dr. Beswick in Seventeenth street," said Phillida.

"Beswick is a very good young fellow, with ample hospital experience," said Gunstone. "Can you send for him at once?"

Robert, who stood alert without the door, was told to bring Dr. Beswick in the carriage, and in a very short space of time Beswick was there, having left Mrs. Beswick sure that success and renown could not be far away when her husband was called on Gunstone's recommendation, and fetched in a coupe under the conduct of what seemed to her a coachman and a footman. Beswick's awkwardness and his abrupt up-and-downness of manner contrasted strangely with Dr. Gunstone's simple but graceful ways. A few rapid directions served to put the case into Beswick's hands, and the old doctor bowed swiftly to all in the room, descended the stairs, and, having picked his way hurriedly through a swarm of children on the sidewalk, entered the carriage again, and was gone.

Millard looked at his watch, remembered that he had had no breakfast, and prepared to take his leave.

"Thank you, Charley, ever so much," said his aunt. "I don't know what I should have done without you."

"Miss Callender is the one to thank," said Millard, scarcely daring to look at her, as he bade her and Dr. Beswick good-morning.

When he had reached the bottom of the long flight of stairs, Millard suddenly turned about and climbed upward once more.

"Miss Callender," he said, standing in the door, "let me speak to you, please."

Phillida went out to him. This confidential conversation could not but excite a rush of associations and emotion in the minds of both of them, so that neither dared to look directly at the other as they stood there in the obscure light which struggled through two dusty panes of glass at the top of the next flight.

"You must not stay here," he said. "You're very weary; you will be liable to take the disease. I am going to send a professional nurse."

This solicitude for her was so like the Charley of other times that it made Phillida tremble with a grateful emotion she could not quite conceal.

"A professional nurse will be better for Tommy. But I can not leave while Mrs. Martin has any great need for me." She could not confess to him the responsibility she felt in the case on account of her having undertaken it the evening before as a faith-doctor.

"What is the best way to get a nurse?" asked Millard, regarding her downcast face, and repressing a dreadful impulse to manifest his reviving affection.

"Dr. Beswick will know," said Phillida. "I will send him out." She was glad to escape into the room again, for she was afraid to trust her own feelings longer in Millard's company. The arrangement was made that Dr. Beswick should send a nurse, and then Millard and Beswick went down-stairs together.

Phillida stayed till Mr. Martin came home, hoping to soften the scene between husband and wife. In his heart Martin revered his wife's good sense, but he thought it due to his sex to assert himself once in a while against a wife whose superiority he could not but recognize. As soon as he had accomplished this feat, thereby proving his masculinity, he always repented it. For so long as his wife approved his course he was sure that he could not be far astray; but whenever his vanity had made him act against her judgment he was a mariner out of reckoning, and he made haste to take account of the pole star of her good sense.

He had just now been impelled by certain ugly elements in his nature to give his wife a taste of his power as the head of the family, the more that she had dared to make sport of his new science and of his new oracle, Miss Bowyer. But once he had become individually responsible for Tommy's life without the security of Mrs. Martin's indorsement on the back of the bond, he became extremely miserable. As noontime approached he grew so restless that he got excused from his bench early, and came home.

Motives of delicacy had prevented any communication between Phillida and Mrs. Martin regarding the probable attitude of Mr. Martin toward the transactions of the morning. But when his ascending footsteps, steady and solemn as the Dead March in "Saul," were heard upon the stairs, their hearts failed them.

"How's little Tommy?" he asked.

"I don't think he's any better," said Mrs. Martin.

"Come to think," said the husband, "I guess I'd better send word to Miss Bowyer to give it up and not come any more, and then I'd better get a regular doctor. I don't somehow like to take all the responsibility, come to think."

"Miss Bowyer's given up the case," said Mrs. Martin. "Charley's been here, scared to death about Tommy. He brought a great doctor from Fifth Avenue, and together they sent for Dr. Beswick. Miss Bowyer gave up the case."

"Give up the case, did she?" he said wonderingly.

"Yes."

"Well, that's better. But I didn't ever hardly believe she'd go and give it up."

Mr. Martin did not care to inquire further. He was rid of responsibility, and finding himself once more under the lee of his wife, he could eat his dinner and go back to work a happier man.



XXXV.

PHILLIDA AND HER FRIENDS.

The appearance in the Martin apartment of the trained nurse, who was an old friend and hospital associate of Mrs. Beswick's, relieved Phillida of night service; but nothing could relieve her sense of partial responsibility for the delay in calling a doctor, and her resolution to stay by little Tommy as much as possible until the issue should be known. Every day while the nurse rested she took her place with the patient, holding him in her arms for long hours at a time, and every day Millard called to make inquiries. He was not only troubled about the little boy, but there hung over him a dread of imminent calamity to Phillida. On the fifth day the symptoms in Tommy's case became more serious, but at the close of the sixth Dr. Beswick expressed himself as hopeful. The next evening, when Millard called, he learned that Tommy was improving slowly, and that Miss Callender had not come to the Martins' on that day. His aunt thought that she was probably tired out, and that she had taken advantage of Tommy's improvement to rest. But when had Phillida been known to rest when anybody within her range was suffering? Millard felt sure that she would at least have come to learn the condition of the sick boy had she been able.

He hesitated to make inquiry after Phillida's health. Her effort to avoid conversation with him assured him that she preferred not to encourage a new intimacy. But though he debated, he did not delay going straight to the Callenders' and ringing the bell.

Agatha came to the door.

"Good-evening, Miss Agatha," he said, presuming so much on his old friendship as to use her first name.

"Good-evening, Mr. Millard," said Agatha, in an embarrassed but austere voice.

"I called to inquire after your sister. Knowing that she had been exposed to diphtheria, I was afraid—" He paused here, remembering that he no longer had any right to be afraid on her account.

Agatha did not wait for him to re-shape or complete his sentence. She said, "Thank you. She has a sore throat, which makes us very uneasy. Cousin Philip has just gone to see if he can get Dr. Gunstone."

When Millard had gone, Agatha told her mother that Charley had called.

"I am glad of it," said Mrs. Callender. "Did you ask him in?"

"Not I," said Agatha, with a high head. "If he wants to renew his acquaintance with Phillida, he can do it without our asking him. I was just as stiff as I could be with him, and I told him that Cousin Phil had gone for the doctor. That'll be a thorn in his side, for he always was a little jealous of Philip, I believe."

"Why, Agatha, I'm afraid you haven't done right. You oughtn't to be so severe. For my part, I hope the engagement will be renewed. I am sick and tired of having Phillida risk her life in the tenements. It was very kind of Mr. Millard to call and inquire, I am sure."

"He ought to," said Agatha. "She got this dreadful disease taking care of his relations. I don't want him to think we're dying to have him take Phillida off our hands." Agatha's temper was ruffled by her anxiety at Phillida's sickness. "I'm sure his high and mighty tone about Phillida's faith-cures has worried her enough. Now just let him worry awhile."

Certainly, Agatha Callender's bearing toward him did not reassure Millard. He thought she might have called him Charley; or if that was not just the thing to do, she might have made her voice a little less frosty. He could not get rid of a certain self-condemnation regarding Phillida, and he conjectured that her family were disposed to condemn him also. He thought they ought to consider how severely his patience had been tried; but then they could not know how Phillida was talked about. How could they ever imagine Meadows's brutal impertinence?

He was not clear regarding the nature of the change in Phillida's views. Had she wholly renounced her faith-healing, or was she only opposed to the Christian Science imposture? Or did she think that medicine should be called in after an appeal to Heaven had failed? If he had felt that there was any probability of a renewal of his engagement with Phillida, he could have wished that she might not yet have given up her career as a faith-doctor. He would then have a chance to prove to her that he was not too cowardly to endure reproach for her sake. But, from the way Agatha spoke, it must be that Philip Gouverneur was now in favor rather than he. Nothing had been more evident to him than that Philip was in love with his cousin. What was to be expected but that Philip, with the advantage of cousinly intimacy, should urge his suit, once Phillida was free from her engagement?

But all his other anxieties were swallowed up in the one fear that she who had ventured her life for others so bravely might have sacrificed it. Millard was uneasy the night long, and before he went to the bank he called again at the Callender house. He was glad that it was Sarah, and not Agatha, who came to the door. He sent in a card to Mrs. Callender with the words, "Kind inquiries," written on it, and received through Sarah the reply that Mrs. Callender was much obliged to him for inquiring, and that Miss Callender had diphtheria and was not so well as yesterday.

The cashier of the Bank of Manhadoes was not happy that day. He threw himself into his business with an energy that seemed feverish. He did not feel that it would be proper for him to call again before the next morning; it would seem like trying to take advantage of Phillida's illness. But, with such a life in jeopardy, how could his impatience delay till morning?

Just before three o'clock the Hilbrough carriage stopped at the bank. Mrs. Hilbrough had come to take up her husband for a drive. Hilbrough was engaged with some one in the inner office, which he had occupied since Masters had virtually retired from the bank. Millard saw the carriage from his window, and, with more than his usual gallantry, quitted his desk to assist Mrs. Hilbrough to alight. But she declined to come in; she would wait in the carriage for Mr. Hilbrough.

"Did you know of Miss Callender's illness?" he asked.

"No; is it anything serious?" Mrs. Hilbrough showed a sincere solicitude.

"Diphtheria," he said. "I called there this morning. Mrs. Callender sent word that Phillida was not so well as yesterday."

Mrs. Hilbrough was pleased that Millard had gone so far as to inquire. She reflected that an illness, if not a dangerous one, might be a good thing for lovers situated as these two. But diphtheria was another matter.

"I wish I knew how she's getting along this afternoon," said Mrs. Hilbrough.

"I would call again at once," said Millard, "but, you know, my relations are peculiar. To call twice in a day might seem intrusive."

"I would drive there at once," said Mrs. Hilbrough, meditatively, "but Mr. Hilbrough is so wrapped up in his children, and so much afraid of their getting diphtheria, that he will not venture into the street where it is. If I should send the footman, Mr. Hilbrough would not let him return to the house again. I'm afraid he would not even approve of communication by a telegraph-boy."

"A boy would be long enough returning to be disinfected," said Millard; but the pleasantry was all in his words; his face showed solicitude and disappointment. He could think of no one but Mrs. Hilbrough through whom he could inquire.

"Perhaps," he said, "you would not object to my sending an inquiry in your name?"

"Oh, certainly not; that would be a good plan, especially if you will take the trouble to let me know how she is. Use my name at your discretion, Mr. Millard. I give you carte blanche," said she, smiling with pleasure at the very notion of bearing so intimate a relation to a clever scheme which lent a little romance to a love-affair highly interesting to her on all accounts. She took out a visiting-card and penciled the words, "Hoping that Miss Callender is not very ill, and begging Mrs. Callender to let her know." This she handed to Millard.

Mr. Hilbrough came out at that moment, and Millard bowed to Mrs. Hilbrough and went in. Hilbrough had been as deeply grieved as his wife to hear that the much-admired Phillida was ill.

"What are you going to do, my dear?" he said. "You can not go there without risking the children. You can't send James without danger of bringing the infection into the house. But we mustn't leave Phillida without some attentions; I don't see how to manage it."

"I've just made Mr. Millard my deputy," said Mrs. Hilbrough. "You see, he feels delicate about inquiring too often; so I have written inquiries on one of my cards and given it to Mr. Millard."

Hilbrough didn't like to do things in a stinted way, particularly in cases which involved his generous feelings.

"Give me a lot of your cards," he said.

"What for?"

"For Mr. Millard."

"I don't see what use he can make of them," said Mrs. Hilbrough, slowly opening her card-case.

"He'll know," said Hilbrough. "He can work a visiting-card in more ways than any other man in New York." Hilbrough took half a dozen of his wife's cards and carried them into the bank.

"Use these as you see fit," he said to Millard, "and if you need a dozen or two more let me know."

Under other circumstances Millard would have been amused, this liberal overdoing was so characteristic of Hilbrough. But he only took the cards with thanks, reflecting that there might be some opportunity to use them.

As he would be detained at the bank until near four o'clock, his first impulse was to call a district messenger and dispatch Mrs. Hilbrough's card of inquiry at once. But he reflected that the illness might be a long one, and that his measures should be taken with reference to his future conduct. On his way home from the bank he settled the manner of his procedure. The Callender family, outside of Phillida at most, did not know his man Robert. By sending the discreet Robert systematically with messages in Mrs. Hilbrough's name, those who attended the door would come to regard him as the Hilbrough messenger.

It was about five o'clock when Robert, under careful instructions, presented Mrs. Hilbrough's card at the Callender door. Unfortunately for Millard's plan, Mrs. Callender, despite Robert's hint that a verbal message would be sufficient, wrote her reply. When the note came into Millard's hands he did not know what to do. His commission did not extend to opening a missive addressed to Mrs. Hilbrough. The first impulse was to dispatch Robert with the note to Mrs. Hilbrough. Then Millard remembered Mr. Hilbrough's apprehension of diphtheria, and that Robert had come from the infected house. He would send Mrs. Callender's note by a messenger. But, on second thought, the note would be a more deadly missile in Hilbrough's eyes than Robert, who had not gone beyond the vestibule of the Callender house. He therefore sent a note by a messenger, stating the case, and received in return permission to open all letters addressed to Mrs. Hilbrough which his man might bring away from the Callenders'. This scheme, by which Millard personated Mrs. Hilbrough, had so much the air of a romantic intrigue of the harmless variety that it fascinated Mrs. Hilbrough, who dearly loved a manoeuver, and who would have given Millard permission to forge her name and seal his notes of inquiry with the recently discovered Hilbrough coat-of-arms, if such extreme measures had been necessary. Mrs. Callender's reply stated that Dr. Gunstone was hopeful, but that Phillida seemed pretty ill.

The next morning Millard's card with "Kind inquiries" was sent in, and the reply was returned that Phillida was no worse. Her mother showed her the card, and Phillida looked at it for half a minute and then wearily put it away. An hour later Robert appeared at the door with a bunch of callas, to which Mrs. Hilbrough's card was attached.

"Oh! see, Philly," said Agatha softly, "Mrs. Hilbrough has sent you some flowers."

Phillida reached her hand and touched them, gazed at them a moment, and then turned her head away, and began to weep.

"What is the matter, Philly? What are you crying about?" said her mother, with solicitation.

"The flowers make me want to die."

"Why, how can the flowers trouble you?"

"They are just like what Charley used to send me. They remind me that there is nothing more for me but to die and have done with the world."

The flowers were put out of her sight; but Phillida's mind had fastened itself on those other callas whose mute appeal for Charley Millard, at the crisis of her history, had so deeply moved her, though her perverse conscience would not let her respond to it.



XXXVI.

MRS. BESWICK.

About the time that Phillida got her flowers Mrs. Beswick sat mending her husband's threadbare overcoat. His vigorous thumbs, in frequent fastening and loosening, had worn the cloth quite through in the neighborhood of the buttons. To repair this, his wife had cut little bits of the fabric off the overplus of cloth at the seams, and worked these little pieces through the holes, and then sewed the cloth down upon them so as to underlay the thumb-worn places. The buttonholes had also frayed out, and these had to be reworked.

"I declare, my love," she said, "you ought to have a new overcoat. This one is not decent enough for a man in your position to wear."

"It'll have to do till warm weather," he said; "I couldn't buy another if I wanted to."

"But you see, love, since Dr. Gunstone called you and sent a carriage for you, there's a chance for a better sort of practice, if we were only able to furnish the office a little better, and, above all, to get you a good overcoat. There, try that on and see how it looks."

Dr. Beswick drew the overcoat on, and Mrs. Beswick gave herself the pleasure of buttoning it about his manly form, and of turning the doctor around as a Bowery shopkeeper does a sidewalk dummy, to try the effect, smoothing the coat with her hands the while.

"That looks a good deal better, Mattie," he said.

"Yes; but it's fraying a little at the cuffs, and when it gives away there darning and patching won't save it. There, don't, don't, love, please; I'm in a hurry."

This last appeal was occasioned by the doctor's availing himself of her proximity to put his arm about her.

"Annie Jackson got twenty-five dollars for nursing the Martin child. Now, if I'd only done that."

"But you couldn't, Mattie. You're a doctor's wife, and you owe it to your position not to go out nursing."

"I know. Never mind; your practice'll rise now that Dr. Gunstone has called you, and they sent a carriage with a coachman and a footman after you. That kind of thing makes an impression on the neighbors. I shouldn't wonder if you'd be able to keep your own carriage in a few years. I'm sure you've got as much ability as Dr. Gunstone, though you don't put on his stylish ways. But we must manage to get you a new overcoat before another winter. Take off the coat, quick."

The last words were the result of a ring at the door. The doctor slipped quickly out of his overcoat, laughing, and then instantly assumed his meditative office face, while Mrs. Beswick opened the door. There stood a man in shirt-sleeves who had come to get the doctor to go to the dry dock to see a workman who was suffering from an attack of cart-pin in the hands of a friend with whom he had been discussing municipal politics.

Fifteen minutes later Mrs. Beswick's wifely heart was gladdened by another ring. When she saw that the visitor was a fine-looking gentleman, scrupulously well-dressed, even to his gloves and cane, she felt that renown and wealth must be close at hand.

"Is Dr. Beswick in?" demanded the caller.

"He was called out in haste to see a patient, who—was—taken down very suddenly," she said; "but I expect him back every moment. Will you come in and wait?"

"Can I see Mrs. Beswick?" said the stranger, entering.

"I am Mrs. Beswick."

"I am Mr. Millard. My aunt, Mrs. Martin, referred me to you. The occasion of my coming is this: Miss Callender, while caring for my little cousin, has caught diphtheria."

"I'm so sorry. You mean the one they call the faith-doctor? She's such a sweet, ladylike person! She's been here to see the doctor. And you want Dr. Beswick to attend her?"

"No; the family have called Dr. Gunstone, who has been their physician before."

Mrs. Beswick was visibly disappointed. It seemed so long to wait until Dr. Beswick's transcendent ability should be recognized. She was tired of hearing of Gunstone.

"I would like to send a good nurse to care for Miss Callender," said Millard, "since she got her sickness by attention to my little cousin. My aunt, Mrs. Martin, said that the nurse Dr. Beswick sent to her child was a friend of yours, I believe."

"Yes; I was in the hospital with her. But you couldn't get Miss Jackson, who nursed the little Martin boy. She's going to take charge of a case next week. It's a first-rate case that will last all summer. You could find a good nurse by going to the New York Hospital."

Millard looked hopeless. After a moment he said: "It wouldn't do. You see the family of Miss Callender wouldn't have me pay for a nurse if they knew about it. I thought I might get this Miss Jackson to go in as an acquaintance, having known Miss Callender at the Martins'. They needn't know that I pay her. Don't you think I could put somebody in her place, and get her?"

"No; it's a long case, and it will give her a chance to go to the country, and the people have waited nearly a week to get her."

"I suppose I'll have to give it up. Unless—unless—"

Millard paused a moment. Then he said:

"They say you are a trained nurse. If, now, I could coax you to go in as an acquaintance? You have met her, and you like her?"

"Oh, ever so much! She's so good and friendly. But I don't think I could go. The doctor's only beginning, but his practice is improving fast, and his position, you know, might be affected by my going out to nurse again."

But Mrs. Beswick looked a little excited, and Millard, making a hurried estimate of the Beswick financial condition from the few assets visible, concluded that the project was by no means hopeless.

"I wouldn't ask you to go out as a paid nurse. You would go and tender your services as a friend," he said.

"I'd feel like a wretch to be taking pay and pretending to do it all for kindness," said Mrs. Beswick, with a rueful laugh.

"Indeed, it would be a kindness, Mrs. Beswick, and it might save a valuable life."

"I don't know what to say till I consult the doctor," she said, dreaming of all the things she could do toward increasing the doctor's respectability if she had a little extra money. "I can not see that it would hurt his practice if managed in that way."

"Indeed, it might help it," said Millard, seeing Mrs. Beswick's accessible point. "You'd make the friendship of people who are connected with the first families of the city, and you'd make the acquaintance of Dr. Gunstone, who would recognize you only as a friend of Miss Callender's."

"I'll speak to the doctor. I'm sure I wouldn't do it for any one else. I couldn't stay away all the time, you know."

"Stay whatever time you can, and it will give me pleasure to pay you at the highest rate, for the service is a very delicate one."

"I'll feel like a liar," she said, with her head down, "pretending to do it all for nothing, though, indeed, I wouldn't go for anybody else."

"Oh, do it for nothing. We'll have no bargain. I'll make you a present when you are done."

"That'll be better," she said, though Millard himself could hardly see the difference.



XXXVII.

DR. GUNSTONE'S DIAGNOSIS.

Mrs. Beswick, at the cost of a little persistence and a good many caresses, succeeded in getting the doctor to consent that she should go to the Callenders'. The risk of contagion she pooh-poohed. She called at Mrs. Callender's, and, again by a little persistence, succeeded in laying off her hat and sack and ensconcing herself as a volunteer nurse to Phillida. It seemed a case of remarkable disinterestedness to the Callender family, and a case of unparalleled hypocrisy to Mrs. Beswick, but she could not be dissuaded from staying from the early morning to bedtime, assuring Mrs. Callender that she would rather care for her daughter than for any one else. "Except the doctor, of course," she added. She was always pleased when she could contrive to mention the doctor; no topic of conversation brought her so many pleasurable emotions. Phillida became fond of her and whenever she went away longed for her return.

Robert brought flowers every day in Mrs. Hilbrough's name, and Millard called to inquire as often as he thought proper. The tidings secured on the third and fourth days indicated that the attack would prove a lighter one than that which had almost cost the life of Tommy. On the fifth day it was reported that Phillida was convalescent. Dr. Gunstone had announced that he would come no more unless there should appear symptoms of temporary paralysis, such as sometimes follow this disease, or unless other complications should arise. Millard thought it would be more prudent and, so to speak, realistic, to make Mrs. Hilbrough's inquiries and his own less frequent after this. He and Robert, therefore, called on alternate days. On Monday it was Mr. Millard who called, on Tuesday it was a bunch of flowers and inquiries in Mrs. Hilbrough's name. But Phillida's progress was so slow that it seemed doubtful after some days whether she made any advancement at all. The disease had quite disappeared, but strength did not return. At the end of a week from Dr. Gunstone's leave-taking, the family were in great anxiety lest there might be some obscure malady preying on her strength, and there was talk of taking her to some southern place to meet half-way the oncoming spring. But this would have drawn heavily on the family savings, which were likely to dwindle fast enough; the appearance of diphtheria having vacated all the rooms in the house at a time when there was small hope of letting them again before the autumn.

Milder measures than a trip were tried first. The arm-chair in which she sat was removed into the front parlor in hope that a slight change of scene might be an improvement; the cheerful sight of milk-wagons and butcher-carts, the melodious cries of old clothes buyers and sellers of "ba-nan-i-yoes" and the piping treble of girl-peddlers of horse-red-deesh were somehow to have a tonic effect upon her. But the spectacle of the rarely swept paving-stones of a side-street in the last days of March was not inspiriting. Phillida had the additional discomfort of involuntarily catching glimpses of her own pallid and despondent face in the pier-glass between the windows.

As for the life of the street, it seemed to her to belong to a world in which she no longer had any stake. The shock of disillusion regarding faith-healing had destroyed for the time a good deal besides. If mistaken in one thing she might be in many. However wholesome and serviceable a critical skepticism may prove to an enthusiast in the full tide of health and activity, to Phillida broken in heart and hope it was but another weight to sink her to the bottom. For now there was no longer love to look forward to, nor was she even able to interest herself again in the work that had mainly occupied her life, but which also she had marred by her errors. Turn either way she felt that she had spoiled her life.

Looking out of the window listlessly, late one afternoon, her attention was awakened by a man approaching with some cut flowers in his hand. She noticed with a curious interest that he wore a cap like the one she had remarked in the hands of Millard's valet. As he passed beneath the window, she distinctly recognized Robert as the man Millard had sent to hasten the coming of the coupe, and when he mounted the steps she felt her pulses beat more quickly.

Her mother entered presently with the flowers.

"From Mrs. Hilbrough with inquiries," Mrs. Callender read from the card as she arranged the flowers in a vase on the low marble table under the pier-glass.

"Mrs. Hilbrough?" said Phillida with a feeling of disappointment. "But that was Charley Millard's man."

"No, that is the man Mrs. Hilbrough has sent ever since you were taken ill," said the mother. "He speaks in a peculiar English way; did you hear him? You've got a better color this evening, I declare."

"Mama, that is Charley's man," persisted Phillida. "I saw him at the Graydon. And the flowers he has brought all along are in Charley's taste—just what he used to send me, and not anything out of Mrs. Hilbrough's conservatory. Give me a sip of water, please." Phillida's color had all departed now.

Having drunk the water she leaned against her chair-back and closed her eyes. Continuous and assiduous attention from Mrs. Hilbrough was more than she had expected; and now that the messenger was proven to be Millard's own man, she doubted whether there were not some mystery about the matter, the more that the flowers sent were precisely Millard's favorites.

The next day Phillida sat alone looking into the street, as the twilight of a cloudy evening was falling earlier than usual, when Agatha came into the room to light two burners, with a notion that darkness might prove depressing to her sister. Phillida turned to watch the process of touching a match to the gas, as an invalid is prone to seek a languid diversion in the least things. When the gas was lighted she looked out of the window again, and at the same moment the door-bell sounded. To save Sarah's deserting the dinner on the range, Agatha answered it. Phillida, with a notion that she might have a chance to verify her recognition of Millard's valet, kept her eyes upon the portion of the front steps that was visible where she sat. She saw Millard himself descend the steps and pass in front of her window. He chanced to look up, and his agitation was visible even from where she sat as he suddenly lifted his hat and bowed, and then hurried away.

The night that followed was a restless one, and it was evident in the morning that Dr. Gunstone must be called again. Mrs. Callender found Phillida so weak that she hesitated to speak to her of a note she had received in the morning mail. It might do good; it might do harm to let her know its contents. Agatha was consulted and she turned the scale of Mrs. Callender's decision.

"Phillida, dear," said the mother, "I don't know whether I ought to mention it to you or not. You are very weak this morning. But Charley Millard has asked for permission to make a brief call. Could you bear to see him?"

Phillida's face showed her deeply moved. After a pause and a struggle she said: "Charley is sorry for me, that is all. He thinks I may die, and he feels grateful for my attention to his aunt. But if he had to begin over again he would never fall in love with me."

"You don't know that, Phillida. You are depressed; you underestimate yourself."

"With his advantages he could take his choice almost," said Phillida. "It's very manly of him to be so constant to an unfortunate and broken-hearted person like me. But I will not have him marry me out of pity."

"I'm afraid you are depressed by your weakness. I don't think you ought to refuse to see him if you feel able," said the mother.

"I am not able to see him. It is easier to refuse in this way than after I have been made ill by too much feeling. I am not going to subject Charley to the mortification of taking into his circle a wife that will be always remembered as—as a sort of quack-doctor."

Saying this Phillida broke down and wept.

When Agatha heard of her decision she came in and scolded her sister roundly for a goose. This made Phillida weep again, but there was a firmness of will at the base of her character that held her determination unchanged. About an hour later she begged her mother to write the answer at her dictation. It read:

"Miss Callender wishes me to say that she is not able to bear an interview. With the utmost respect for Mr. Millard and with a grateful appreciation of his kind attention during her illness, she feels sure that it is better not to renew their acquaintance."

After this letter was sent off Phillida's strength began to fail, and the mother and sister were thrown into consternation. In the afternoon Dr. Gunstone came again. He listened to the heart, he examined the lungs, he made inquisition for symptoms and paused baffled. The old doctor understood the mind-cure perfectly; balked in his search for physical causes he said to Mrs. Callender:

"Perhaps if I could speak with Miss Callender alone a few moments it might be better."

"I have no secrets from mama," protested Phillida.

"That's right, my child," said Dr. Gunstone gravely, "but you can talk with more freedom to one person than to two. I want to see your mother alone, also, when I have talked with you."

Mrs. Callender retired and the doctor for a minute kept up a simulation of physical examination in order to wear away the restraint which Phillida might feel at being abruptly left for a confidential conversation with her physician.

"I'm afraid you don't try to get well, Miss Callender," he said.

"Does trying make any difference?" demanded Phillida.

"Yes, to be sure; that's the way that the mesmerists and magnetizers, and the new faith-cure people work their cures largely. They enlist the will, and they do some good. They often help chronic invalids whom the doctors have failed to benefit."

Dr. Gunstone had his hand on Phillida's wrist, and he could not conjecture why her pulse increased rapidly at this point in the conversation. But he went on:

"Have you really tried to get well? Have you wanted to get well as soon as possible?"

"On mama's account I ought to wish to get well," she said.

"But you are young and you have much happiness before you. Don't you wish to get well on your own account?"

Phillida shook her head despondently.

"Now, my child, I am an old man and your doctor. May I ask whether you are engaged to be married?"

"No, doctor, I am not," said Phillida, trying to conjecture why he asked this question.

"Have you been engaged?"

"Yes," said Phillida.

"And the engagement was broken off?"

"Yes."

"Recently?"

"Yes, rather recently. This last winter."

"Now, tell me as your doctor, whether or not the circumstances connected with that interruption of your love-affair have depressed you—have made you not care much about living?"

Phillida's "I suppose they have" was almost inaudible.

"Now, my child, you must not let these things weigh upon you. The world will not always look dark. Try to see it more lightly. I think you must go away. You must have a change of scene and you must see people. I will find your mother. Good-morning, Miss Callender."

And with that the doctor shook hands in his half-sympathetic, half-reserved manner, and went out into the hall.

Mrs. Callender, who was waiting at the top of the stairs, came down and encountered him.

"May I see you alone a moment?" said the doctor, looking at his watch, which always seemed to go too fast to please him.

Mrs. Callender led the way to the basement dining-room, below, beckoning Agatha, who sat there, to go up to her sister.

"Mrs. Callender, there is in your daughter's case an interrupted love affair which is depressing her health, and which may cut short her life. Do you think that the engagement is broken off for all time, or is it but a tiff?"

"I hardly know, doctor. My daughter is a peculiar person; she is very good, but with ideas of her own. We hardly understand the cause of the disagreement—or why she still refuses to see the young man."

"Has the young man shown any interest in Miss Callender since the engagement ceased?"

"He has called here several times during her sickness to inquire, and he sent a note this morning asking to see her. She has declined to see him, while expressing a great esteem for him."

"That's bad. You do not regard him as an objectionable person?"

"Oh, no; quite the contrary."

"It is my opinion that Miss Callender's recovery may depend on the renewal of that engagement. If that is out of the question—and it is a delicate matter to deal with—especially as the obstacle is in her own feelings, she must have travel. She ought to have change of scene, and she ought to meet people. Take her South, or North, or East, or West—to Europe or anywhere else, so as to be rid of local associations, and to see as many new things and people as possible. Good-morning, Mrs. Callender."

Having said this the old doctor mounted the basement stairs too nimbly for Mrs. Callender to keep up with him. When she reached the top he had already closed the front door and a moment later the wheels of his barouche were rattling violently over the irregular pavement that lay between the Callender house and Third Avenue.

To take Phillida away—that was the hard problem the doctor had given to Mrs. Callender. For with the love affair the mother might not meddle with any prospect of success. But the formidable barrier to a journey was the expense.

"Where would you like to go, Phillida?" said her mother.

"To Siam. I'd like to see the things and the people I saw when I was a child, when papa was with us and when it was easy to believe that everything that happened was for the best. It would be about as easy for us to go to Siam as anywhere else, for we haven't the money to spare to go anywhere. I sit and dream of the old house, and the yellow people, and the pleasure of being a child, and the comfort of believing. I am tired to death of this great, thinking, pushing, western world, with its restlessness and its unbelief. If I were in the East I could believe and hope, and not worry about what Philip calls 'the immensities.'"



XXXVIII.

PHILIP'S CONFESSION.

It was evident that something must be done speedily to save Phillida from a decline that might end in death, or from that chronic invalidism which is almost worse. All sort of places were thought of, but the destination was at last narrowed down to the vicinity of Hampton Roads, as the utmost limit that any prudent expenditure would allow the Callenders to venture upon. Even this would cost what ordinary caution forbade them to spend, and Phillida held out stoutly against any trip until the solicitude of her mother and sister bore down all objections.

Not long after Dr. Gunstone's visit, Mrs. Callender received a letter from Mrs. Hilbrough expressing anxiety regarding Phillida, and regretting that her husband's horror of diphtheria still prevented her from calling. She continued:

"I very much wish to do something by which I can show my love for Phillida. Won't you let me bear the expense of a trip southward, if you think that will do good? If you feel delicate about it, consider it a loan to be paid whenever it shall be convenient, but it would give me great happiness if I might be allowed to do this little act of affection."

Mrs. Callender showed the note to Phillida. "It would save our selling the bonds," she said, "but I do not like to go in debt, and of course we would repay it by degrees."

"It is a trifle to her," said Phillida, "and I think we might accept two hundred dollars or more as a loan to be repaid."

"Well, if you think so, Phillida, but I do hate to be in debt."

Phillida sat thinking for a minute. Then her pale face colored.

"Did the letter come by mail?" she asked.

Mrs. Callender examined the envelope. "I thought it came from the postman, but there is no postmark; Sarah brought it to me."

"Suppose you ask Sarah to come up," said Phillida.

On Sarah's arrival Phillida asked her who brought this letter.

"It wuz that young man with the short side whiskers just under his ears and a cap that's got a front before and another one behind, so't I don't see for the life of me how he gets it on right side before."

"The man that brought flowers when I was sick?"

"That very same, Miss."

"All right, Sarah. That'll do." Then when Sarah had gone Phillida leaned her head back and said:

"It won't do, Mother. We can't accept it."

It was a tedious week after Dr. Gunstone's last visit before a trip was finally determined on and a destination selected, and Mrs. Callender, who had a genius for thoroughness, demanded yet another week in which to get ready. Phillida, meanwhile, sat wearily waiting for to-morrow to follow to-day.

"Mother," she said, one day, rousing herself from a reverie, "what a good fellow Cousin Philip is, after all! I used to feel a certain dislike for what seemed to me irresolution and inactivity in him. But ever since I was taken sick he has been just like a brother to me."

"He has taken charge of us," said Mrs. Callender. "He has inquired about board for us at Hampton, and he has worked out all the routes by rail and steamboat."

Philip's kindness to his aunt's family was originally self-moved, but, as Phillida convalesced, his mother contrived to send him with messages to her, and even suggested to him that his company would be cheering to his cousin. Philip sat and chatted with her an hour every day, but the exercise did not raise his spirits in the least. For his mother frequently hinted that if he had courage he would be more prompt to avail himself of his opportunities in life. Philip could have no doubt as to what his mother meant by opportunities in life, and he knew better than any one else that he was prone to waste his haymaking sunshine in timid procrastinations. But how to make love to Phillida? How offer his odd personality to such a woman as she? His mother's severe hints about young men who could not pluck ripe fruit hanging ready to their hand spurred him, but whenever he was in Phillida's presence something of preoccupation in her mental attitude held him back from tender words. He thought himself a little ridiculous, and when he tried to imagine himself making love he thought that he would be ten times more absurd. If he could have got into his favorite position in an arm-chair and could have steadied his nerves by synchronous smoking, as he was accustomed to do whenever he had any embarrassing business matters to settle, he might have succeeded in expressing to Phillida the smoldering passion that made life a bitterness not to be sweetened even by Caxton imprints and Bedford-bound John Smiths of 1624.

He always knew that if he should ever succeed in letting Phillida know of his affection it would be by a sudden charge made before his diffidence could rally to oppose him. He had once or twice in his life done bold things by catching his dilatory temper napping. With this idea he went every day to call on Phillida, hoping that a fit of desperation might carry him at a bound over the barrier. At first he looked for some very favorable opportunity, but after several visits he would have been willing to accept one that offered the least encouragement.