"What can you have to say to your mother that I may not hear?" she asked, with a certain sharpness of tone that surprised him. He looked at her attentively, and that seemed to displease her still more. To his unbounded astonishment she burst out crying, and cried with a sort of miserable, helpless vehemence, that was infinitely distressing to him. "My darling! can you not tell me what is wrong?" he said, "for there _is_ something wrong, you are not yourself. Who can you turn to if you have any worry or distress so well as to your husband? Have you no confidence in me?" "Don't," she sobbed, "you only make me worse!" He was deeply wounded, not so much by her words as by the way she shrank from him. Lady Lyons made her voice heard in the passage, asking if her son was in, and Grace snatched her hand from Paul, and rushed out of the room by one door as her mother-in-law came in at the other. Paul was an affectionate son, but at that particular moment he would have preferred to have had time to discover what was the matter with his wife, and he was so absorbed that his mother told him a fact very interesting to her, and which she considered should have been equally interesting to him, without his taking it in. "My _dear_ Paul," she said at length, "you are not attending to me one bit!" "I beg your pardon, mother, I think I heard what you said." "About the doctor, Paul?" "I think so," he answered, trying to recall her words. "Well, you see, I shall have to get another that being the case." "A very good thing, I should say." "Paul! the death of an eminent medical man is not a subject for rejoicing." "Oh! he is dead. Who is dead, mother?" "Dr. Dickson, and you said you heard what I said. Oh! Paul." "Well, I hear now, and I do not think I ever heard Doctor Dickson's name before." "After that!" said Lady Lyons, throwing up her hands; "he was the only man--the only man who quite understood my constitution." "Well, I'm sorry he is dead if he was useful to you, mother, but you have been no better and no worse ever since I can remember anything. Would you mind my leaving you for a moment? I am afraid Grace is not well." He left her and went to find his wife. Grace had recovered herself, and reproached him for making "a fuss." "You know I am not strong," she said, "and easily sent up and down. I am like a shuttlecock, and sometimes, Paul, I feel that we are not as much alike as we thought." "Now you have hurt and vexed me still more," he said, in a tone of real vexation. "What discoveries will you make next? In what way am I your inferior? I know in many ways I am, but in what particular am I wanting to-day?" "My inferior!" said Grace, with sudden passion; "I feel beneath you in all things--in principle, in every thing." She covered her face with her hands.