Mrs. Ogilvie was drawing on her gloves and buttoning them with an air much more grave and intent than she had bestowed upon her doctor during the discussion of her health. 'Even an animal,' she said lightly, 'is allowed to creep away into the denseness of a thicket and nurse its wounds unseen; but we superior human beings are like the beggars who expose a mutilated arm to the pitiful, and would fain show their wounds to every passer-by.' 'Perhaps you will allow me to write to your son?' said the surgeon. Mrs. Ogilvie replied by a quick and unequivocal answer in the negative; then, relaxing a little, she said more lightly, but with intent, 'I have always triumphed over difficulties all my life--I have always overcome.' 'That is quite possible,' said the physician gravely. Mrs. Ogilvie stood up and began to arrange her veil before the mirror which hung above the mantel-piece; and, as she did so, she glanced critically at her face under her large, fashionable-looking hat, with its bizarre trimmings. 'I am very plain,' she said, with a sort of sensuous enjoyment in her frankness, 'and yet I have passed successfully for a beautiful woman most of my life. I am also what is ridiculously called a power in society, and I owe everything to my own will. I detest unsuccess!' 'You are talking of the success which lies in the hands of every clever woman,' said the doctor, 'but your health is another matter.' 'I believe in my good luck; it has never failed me,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, as she shook hands and said good-bye. When she reached home she dressed in one of her sumptuous gowns, for a score of country neighbours were coming to meet Jane Erskine as the fiancee of her son. Her maid bore the brunt of my lady's sarcasm during the time of dressing, and was given a curt notice of dismissal before the toilet was complete. The woman's big round eyes, which were so obnoxious to her mistress, filled with tears as she accepted her discharge. And Mrs. Ogilvie, descending the broad staircase of the house with her air of magnificence, her jewels, and her red hair, rapped her fan suddenly and sharply on the palm of her hand, so that the delicate tortoise-shell sticks were broken. 'Why does she look at me like that?' she said fiercely below her breath. 'I am glad I dismissed her, and I am glad she cried! Why should not some one else suffer as well as I?' 'You are not really tiresome, Jane,' she said after dinner, as the two sat together on a couch. 'I have never known another engaged young lady whom I did not avoid; but you are distressing yourself quite unnecessarily about me. When I look tired, for instance, you may take it as a sure sign that I am bored; nothing ever really makes me feel ill except dullness.' 'Still,' urged Jane, 'Peter and I want it so much. We think if you were to get advice from a doctor it would make us feel so much happier about you.'