"How will he receive me?" she wondered.

He received her coldly and curtly. There was a hurry and abstraction in
his manner utterly unlike his former leisurely sympathy. Many causes
contributed to this effect; he was still all bruised and bleeding from
the blow dealt to him by Rhoda's strong young arm; an epidemic had kept
him on his legs all day and a great part of the night; his time had never
been so valuable, and he had been obliged to waste ten minutes of it
contemplating the furniture in that detestable drawing-room. He was
worried and overworked, and Miss Quincey thought he was still offended;
his very appearance made her argue the worst. No hope to-day of clearing
up that terrible misunderstanding.

She tremulously obeyed his first brief order, one by one undoing the
buttons of her dress, laying bare her poor chest, all flat and formless
as a child's. A momentary gentleness came over him as he adjusted the
tubes of his stethoscope and began the sounding, backwards and forwards
from heart to lungs, and from lungs to heart again; while the Old Lady
looked on as merry as Destiny, and nodded her head and smiled, as much to
say, "Tchee-tchee, what a farce it is!"

He put up the stethoscope with a click.

"There is nothing the matter with you."

Mrs. Moon gave out a subdued ironical chuckle.

Miss Quincey looked anxiously into his face. "Do you not think the
heart--the heart is a little--?"