‘Fudge,’ said Aunt Charity, who had always been strong, and had no faith in nerves, ‘don’t talk to me of your nervous temperaments. I know what it means. It means that Annie has fallen sick of always having her own way. She has everything she can desire, and she is ill of having nothing more to wish for. A case of Alexander over again in a London drawing-room--that’s what it is, and nothing else, my word upon it; and I know my niece.’ ‘Yes, Mr. Maxwell; perhaps there is some truth in what Aunt Charity says,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘I think you know I don’t judge harshly----’ ‘That means that _I_ judge harshly,’ said Miss Charity, bursting in; ‘thank you, my dear. Well, you may call me uncharitable if you please; but there’s where it is; let James lose the half of his fortune, or all his china get broken, and she’d come round in no time--that’s what ails Annie. But as she belongs to a very refined society, and has a silly husband, it’s called nerves. Bless me, Cherry, I hope I knew what nerves were, and all about it, before you were born.’ ‘You could not know Annie before I was born,’ said Miss Cherry, who was devoid of imagination. ‘I hope you will give her your best attention, Mr. Maxwell. My brother James is a very fond husband, poor fellow! If anything happened to Annie, he would never get the better of it. As for marrying again, or anything of that sort----’ ‘Good heavens!’ said the doctor; ‘I hope there is no need to take such an idea into consideration. We must not go so fast.’ Miss Charity laughed. She was a great deal older than her niece, but much more sensible. ‘There’s the seventh commandment to be thought of,’ she said; for her remarks were sometimes more free than they ought to be, and put Miss Cherry to the blush: and this was all the worse because she immediately walked out into the garden through the open window and left the younger lady alone with the doctor, who was an old friend of the family, and contemporary of the second Charity Beresford. Very old friends they were; even it was supposed that in their youth there had been or might have been passages of sentiment between these two now sitting so calmly opposite each other. Mr. Maxwell, however, by this time was a widower, and not at all sentimental. He laughed, too, as Miss Beresford made her exit by the window. He was very well used to the family, and all its ways. ‘_She_ wears very well,’ he said, reflectively. ‘I don’t think she has aged to speak of for these twenty years. When I used to be coming here in my early days, when I was beginning practice----’ ‘The rest of us have changed very much since then.’ ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Maxwell, thinking most of himself; ‘but she not at all. I could think when I look at her that I was still, as I say, a young fellow beginning practice----’