down into its nest, sometimes with the swoop of the eagle on his
unsuspecting quarry, I believed that none ever before loved as I loved;
that such love was an abnormal wonder, made solely for me, and I for it.
Then my mind insensibly hushed its angrier and more turbulent thoughts, as
my gaze rested upon the roof-tops of Lilian's home, and the shimmering
silver of the moonlit willow, under which I had seen her gazing into the
roseate heavens.




CHAPTER VIII.

When I returned to the drawing-room, the party was evidently about to
break up. Those who had grouped round the piano were now assembled round
the refreshment-table. The cardplayers had risen, and were settling or
discussing gains and losses. While I was searching for my hat, which I
had somewhere mislaid, a poor gentleman, tormented by tic-doloureux, crept
timidly up to me,--the proudest and the poorest of all the hidalgos
settled on the Hill. He could not afford a fee for a physician's advice;
but pain had humbled his pride, and I saw at a glance that he was
considering how to take a surreptitious advantage of social intercourse,
and obtain the advice without paying the fee. The old man discovered the
hat before I did, stooped, took it up, extended it to me with the profound
bow of the old school, while the other hand, clenched and quivering, was
pressed into the hollow of his cheek, and his eyes met mine with wistful
mute entreaty. The instinct of my profession seized me at once. I could
never behold suffering without forgetting all else in the desire to
relieve it.