Mrs. Ashleigh held out her hand as I made towards the door.

Is there a physician who has not felt at times how that ceremonious fee
throws him back from the garden-land of humanity into the market-place of
money,--seems to put him out of the pale of equal friendship, and say,
"True, you have given health and life. Adieu! there, you are paid for
it!" With a poor person there would have been no dilemma, but Mrs.
Ashleigh was affluent: to depart from custom here was almost impertinence.
But had the penalty of my refusal been the doom of never again beholding
Lilian, I could not have taken her mother's gold. So I did not appear to
notice the hand held out to me, and passed by with a quickened step.

"But, Dr. Fenwick, stop!"

"No, ma'am, no! Miss Ashleigh would have recovered as soon without me.
Whenever my aid is really wanted, then--but Heaven grant that time may
never come! We will talk again about her to-morrow."

I was gone,--now in the garden ground, odorous with blossoms; now in
the lane, inclosed by the narrow walls; now in the deserted streets, over
which the moon shone full as in that winter night when I hurried from the
chamber of death. But the streets were not ghastly now, and the moon was
no longer Hecate, that dreary goddess of awe and spectres, but the sweet,
simple Lady of the Stars, on whose gentle face lovers have gazed ever
since (if that guess of astronomers be true) she was parted from earth to
rule the tides of its deeps from afar, even as love, from love divided,
rules the heart that yearns towards it with mysterious law.