some young women, her fellows at the school, in this direction had
disgusted her with it, and she had perceived that after all there is
nothing better for a girl, even a girl who is a doctor of medicine, than
a ladylike manner. Now, however, she wished that she could do or say
something aggressively mannish, for she felt herself dwindling away to
the merest femininity, under a scrutiny which had its fascination,
whether agreeable or disagreeable. "You must," he said, with really
unwarrantable patronage, "have found that the study of medicine has its
difficulties,--you must have been very strongly drawn to it."

"Oh no, not at all; I had rather an aversion at first," she replied, with
the instant superiority of a woman where the man suffers any topic to
become personal. "Why did you think I was drawn to it?"

"I don't know--I don't know that I thought so," he stammered. "I believe
I intended to ask," he added bluntly; but she had the satisfaction of
seeing him redden, and she did not volunteer anything in his relief. She
divined that it would leave him with an awkward sense of defeat if he
quitted the subject there; and in fact he had determined that he would
not. "Some of our ladies take up the study abroad," he said; and he went
on to speak, with a real deference, of the eminent woman who did the
American name honor by the distinction she achieved in the schools of
Paris.

"I have never been abroad," said Grace.

"No?" he exclaimed. "I thought all American ladies had been abroad"; and
now he said, with easy recognition of her resolution not to help him out,
"I suppose you have your diploma from the Philadelphia school."