He was so magnificent a man as he stood there that the brusqueness of his words was easily forgiven; he had been so unremitting in his care ever since, in the illness of Lord Eldon's family physician, he had been called in on the occasion of my accident, that I had become genuinely attached to him. Our acquaintance had ripened into something almost like intimacy, since my host and his family had been unexpectedly called from home by the illness of a married daughter, and it had come to be the usual thing for Dr. Polnitzski to pass with me the evenings of my slow convalescence, which would otherwise have been so intolerably tedious. "I dare say I've been too much babied most of my life," I returned; "but a month of this sort of thing is pretty serious for anybody." He smiled, then his face grew grave. "I dare say you may think me tediously moral," he said, "but I can't help thinking of what I see every day. For some years I've been trying to do something for the poor people about here, and especially for the operatives over at Friezeton. If you had any idea of the things I've seen-- But, after all, you would n't understand if I were to tell you." "I know," I returned, "that you have devoted yourself to the most generous work among those poor wretches." "I beg your pardon," responded he, stiffening at once, "but we will, if you please, waive compliments." "But," I persisted, "Lord Eldon and others have more than once expressed their wonder that you, with talents and acquirements so unusual, should bury yourself--" "I was not speaking of myself," he interrupted, somewhat impatiently, "but of my poor patients. If you knew what they suffer uncomplainingly, it might make you a little more content." We were both silent for a little time. I looked across the chamber at the strong figure of the Russian, as he stood by the fire, and wondered what his past had been. I knew that he was a mystery to all the neighborhood where he had lived for the better part of a dozen years. He was evidently a gentleman, and he seemed to be wealthy. I had myself found him to be of unusual culture and refinement, and he had unobtrusively won recognition as a physician of marked skill and attainments. The wonder was why he should be living in England as an exile, and why he so persistently resisted all efforts to draw him from his retirement. He devoted himself to philanthropic work in a perfectly quiet fashion, declining to be enrolled as part of any organized charity. He was more and more, however, coming to be appreciated as a skillful physician, and to be called in for consultation. He impressed me on the whole as a man who had a past, and I could not but wonder what that past had been.