“Think,” she said; “remember, remember! How did you be to me that night—that night at Lady Boisville’s? The good count he did come afterwards to console me. He said to me, ‘Excuse him, because he is so clever a man, and he understands _les nerfs_ as no other man does understand them.’ Then he tells me more——” “The count is extremely kind,” said Hugh. “He appears to know me very well. And pray what more did the count tell you about me?” “He tells me” (she closed her eyes and spoke with hesitation and in a stifled voice) “how beautiful was your young wife, and how your poor heart is buried in her grave.” There was silence in the big, shabby old room, where the Princess Andriocchi, seated in the lamplight, was the spot of light among the shadows. The princess had not spoken mockingly; she spoke like a true woman, sympathetically, although a cool listener would have gathered from her tone and manner how deeply she loved the man to whom she addressed those words. But Hugh was no cool listener; he was excited to the utmost pitch, beyond the point where he could recognise that he was not himself. “That is true in a way,” he said, roughly, with a half laugh. “It is true as far as this: if I had a heart, it might be buried in a grave. But I have none, princess. All women and men are alike to me. If they are ill and want me, then, of course, they are my patients, and I am interested in them as such. Otherwise—well, I wish good to everyone; but I am content to live alone—aye, and to die alone.” He had paced the room while venting that speech. Turning abruptly, as he somewhat savagely enunciated those last words, he saw a smile on Mercedes’ sweet face. “Ah!” she said, shaking her head, “you think you feel that. But——” She looked incredulity. He and his sentiments had evidently not impressed her or depressed her spirits in the least. On the contrary, she looked far more human, far better in a physiological sense, than when she first came into the room. “How good it is to be here!” she said, almost ecstatically, glancing above at the dingy ceiling, and around at the rows of book-shelves filled with plain bound volumes. “How much good it does me to be here!” and she heaved a sigh, a sigh of relief and contentment, sinking back in the old chair. There was so true a ring in her voice, such a reality about her, that Dr. Paull was subdued by a sense of awe, or the beginning of awe. The situation was unnatural, yet Mercedes, more than at her ease, was making him feel as if it were not only natural that he and she should be here alone together thus, but even right and proper. She was evidently completely at her ease. While he stood uncomfortably wondering what he should do or say next, she promptly solved the difficulty. “Come here,” she said, not exactly with imperiousness, but certainly with the confidence of one in command. “Come here” (she drew one of the chairs near her own), “and I will tell you—all.”