and muscular; he had such an intellectual forehead; his mouth was so
firm, you could trust it to tell no secrets; and his eyes (they were dark
and deep set) looked as if they saw nothing but Miss Quincey. Indeed, at
the moment he had forgotten all about Rhoda Vivian, and did see nothing
but the little figure in the bed looking more like a rather worn and
wizened child than a middle-aged woman. He was very gentle and
sympathetic; but for that his youth would have been terrible to her. As
it was, Miss Quincey felt a little bit in awe of this clever doctor, who
in spite of his cleverness looked so young, and not only so young but so
formidably fastidious and refined. She had not expected him to look like
that. All the clever young men she had met had displayed a noble contempt
for appearances. To be sure, Miss Quincey knew but little of the world of
men; for at St. Sidwell's the types were limited to three little
eccentric professors, and the plaster gods in the art studio. But for the
gods she might just as well have lived in a nunnery, for whenever Miss
Quincey thought of a man she thought of something like Louisa's husband,
Andrew Mackinnon, who spoke with a strong Scotch accent, and wore flannel
shirts with celluloid collars, and coats that hung about him all anyhow.
But Dr. Cautley was not in the least like Andrew Mackinnon. He had a
distinguished voice; his clothes fitted him to perfection; and his linen,
irreproachable itself, reproved her silently.

Her eyes left him suddenly and wandered about the room. She was full of
little tremors and agitations; she wished that the towels wouldn't look
so much like dish-cloths; she credited him with powers of microscopic
observation, and wondered if he had noticed the stain on the carpet and
the dust on the book-shelves, and if he would be likely to mistake the
quinine tabloids for vulgar liver pills, or her bottle of hair-wash for
hair-dye. Once released from its unnatural labours, her mind returned
instinctively to the trivial as to its home. She glanced at her hat,