the scowl of Mr. Vigors. I coloured with resentment, divined that I was
dismissed, and walked away with a proud crest and a firm step.

When I was out of the gates, in the blind lane, I opened the note. It
began formally. "Mrs. Ashleigh presents her compliments," and went on to
thank me, civilly enough, for my attendance the night before, would not
give me the trouble to repeat my visit, and inclosed a fee, double the
amount of the fee prescribed by custom. I flung the money, as an asp that
had stung me, over the high wall, and tore the note into shreds. Having
thus idly vented my rage, a dull gnawing sorrow came heavily down upon all
other emotions, stifling and replacing them. At the mouth of the lane I
halted. I shrank from the thought of the crowded streets beyond; I shrank
yet more from the routine of duties, which stretched before me in the
desert into which daily life was so suddenly smitten. I sat down by the
roadside, shading my dejected face with a nervous hand. I looked up as
the sound of steps reached my ear, and saw Dr. Jones coming briskly along
the lane, evidently from Abbots' House. He must have been there at the
very time I had called. I was not only dismissed but supplanted. I rose
before he reached the spot on which I had seated myself, and went my way
into the town, went through my allotted round of professional visits; but
my attentions were not so tenderly devoted, my kill so genially quickened
by the glow of benevolence, as my poorer patients had found them in the
morning. I have said how the physician should enter the sick-room. "A
Calm Intelligence!" But if you strike a blow on the heart, the intellect
suffers. Little worth, I suspect, was my "calm intelligence" that day.
Bichat, in his famous book upon Life and Death, divides life into two
classes,--animal and organic. Man's intellect, with the brain for its
centre, belongs to life animal; his passions to life organic, centred in
the heart, in the viscera. Alas! if the noblest passions through which
alone we lift ourselves into the moral realm of the sublime and beautiful