unaccountable changes. He showed the needful attention to Carmina, with
a silent gentleness which presented him in a new character. His
customary manner with ailing persons, women as well as men, was rather
abrupt: his quick perception hurried him into taking the words out of
their mouths (too pleasantly to give offence) when they were describing
their symptoms. There he sat now, contemplating his pale little cousin,
with a patient attention wonderful to see; listening to the commonplace
words which dropped at intervals from her lips, as if--in his state of
health, and with the doubtful prospect which it implied--there were no
serious interests to occupy his mind.

Mrs. Gallilee could endure it no longer.

If she had not deliberately starved her imagination, and emptied her
heart of any tenderness of feeling which it might once have possessed,
her son's odd behaviour would have interested instead of perplexing
her. As it was, her scientific education left her as completely in the
dark, where questions of sentiment were concerned, as if her experience
of humanity, in its relation to love, had been experience in the
cannibal islands. She decided on leaving her niece to repose, and on
taking her son away with her.

"In your present state of health, Ovid," she began, "Carmina must not
accept your professional advice."

Something in those words stung Ovid's temper.

"My professional advice?" he repeated. "You talk as if she was
seriously ill!"