‘Do just as you like,’ replied Geoffrey, mystified, and somewhat disturbed in mind by this proposition; ‘of course you needn’t see him unless you please. But he’s a very good fellow, and my truest friend. I should like you to have made his acquaintance. You’ll think me a selfish beg—fellow for saying so; but I really believe you’d have a better opinion of me if you knew Lucius Davoren. His friendship is a kind of certificate. But of course, if you’d rather not see him, there’s an end of it. I’ll tell him that you have unpleasant associations with his name, and that the very mention of it agitated you.’ ‘No!’ she cried, with a vehemence that startled him. ‘For God’s sake say nothing, tell him nothing, except that I am too ill to see any one. I detest anything like fuss. And why make a mountain out of the veriest molehill? His name reminded me of past sorrow, that is all.’ ‘Capricious,’ thought Geoffrey; ‘with a temper by no means as regular as the classic beauty of her face, I daresay. But were she as violent as Shakespeare’s shrew before Petruchio tamed her, I should not the less adore her. Past sorrow! Some doctor called Davoren may have attended her husband on his death-bed. She is just the kind of woman to lock her heart up in a tomb, and then go about the world luring mankind to their destruction by her calm passionless beauty, and answering all with the same dismal sentence, “My heart is with the dead.”’ He submitted to Mrs. Bertram’s decision. He promised to meet his friend at the station, bring him straight to the sick-room, and with his own hand carry Mr. Davoren’s prescription to the chief chemist of Stillmington. And thus he left her; perplexed, but not all unhappy. Blessings on that sweet child for her timeous indisposition! It had opened the way to his acquaintance with the mother; an acquaintance which, beginning with service and sympathy, promised to ripen quickly into friendship. The last train brought Lucius. The friends met with a strong hand-grasp, a few hearty words of greeting, and then walked swiftly from the station, which, after the manner of provincial stations, had been placed a good half mile from the town, for the advantage of local fly-drivers, no doubt, and the livery-stable interest. ‘And pray who is this small patient in whose welfare you are so concerned, Geoff?’ asked Lucius. ‘Has some piteous case of local distress awakened your dormant philanthropy? I know you’re a good fellow, but I didn’t know you went in for district-visiting.’ ‘There’s no philanthropy in the question, Lucius. Only selfish, pig-headed love. I say pig-headed, because the lady doesn’t value my affection; scorns it, in fact. But I hold on with a bulldog pertinacity. After all, you see, an Englishman’s highest quality is his bulldoggedness.’ ‘But what has your bulldog affection to do with a sick child?’