She no longer felt amiably disposed towards the doctor. He had cast down her dream-castle; he had represented her to herself as a vulgar money-seeker; he had overthrown all her romantic hopes of gaining advancement for her family, and making of Lenny a pattern English gentleman, perhaps nobleman. She saw now what a slender foundation she had built it all upon; but as nothing in the world would ever make Grace give in, she hardened herself over her inward confusion, and stood like a rock though her heart was quaking. The doctor made two or three sharp little speeches; but he was half-angry, too, that the girls upon whom he had been spending so much feeling should be so impervious to his influence. He got up hurriedly at last, and said something about still having some patients to see, though it was getting late. “Good-night,” he said. “I should say I would be glad to do anything I could to help you, if I did not think you were embarking upon a most perilous undertaking. I think, permit me to say so, you should take your mother’s advice first.” “I shall do nothing mamma will disapprove of,” said Grace; and she parted with stateliness from this friend who had been the only one to succour them in their trouble. As for Milly, she was very deprecating and tearful as she held out her two hands to him. “Do not be angry!” she said with her beseeching eyes. It was all the doctor could do not to stoop down and kiss this peace-maker as he went away. He had thought her a little nobody at first, but he did not do so now. “I declare she is as like Laura as one flower is to another,” he said to himself as he went down-stairs. Now Laura was the doctor’s favourite child--and what more could be said? When he was gone, Grace returned to her previous occupation with her father’s papers; but her heart was gone out of her search. “We might have asked him at least to recommend some lawyer to us,” she said, which was the only observation she made to Milly on the subject. Milly, indeed, was dismissed altogether from the employment she had been trusted with before Dr Brewer came in. Grace continued to look over the papers, to put one on this heap, and the other on that; but she no longer required Milly’s pen to write down and describe what each was. For at least an hour they sat silent, the younger sister looking wistfully on, the elder rustling the papers, bending over them with puckers of careful consideration over her eyes, affecting to pause now and then to deliberate over one or another. At length Grace gathered them all together, with a sudden impatient movement, and, putting them back into the despatch-box, concluded suddenly without any warning by an outburst of tears.