“Ah, Celia, poor, dear child! Must we send her away?” her mother asked, but before the doctor had time to answer, Churchley, by a miracle of celerity, again entered, this time bearing toast of the desired complexion. After he had finally disappeared, Mrs. Royce busied herself with flame and kettle and tea-caddy before she repeated her question, and her voice had in it a faint sediment of these preoccupations: “I hope you do not think it necessary to send Celia away, Dr. Despard?” He drew a chair forward and sat down. “No, Mrs. Royce,” he said; “I think it necessary to send you away.” “_Me?_” He bowed. “But my health is excellent. Oh, I see,” she smiled. “My husband has been talking to you about my responsibilities. Yes, they are great, but one is given strength to do what is required of one. I shall not have to desert my post. I am strong.” “I know you are strong, Mrs. Royce,” said he, “but you are the cause of weakness in others. We need not multiply examples: your daughter, the governess, Churchley----” She broke in--“Of course, I admit their weakness. But don’t you see how I protect and support them? How could you imagine that I was the cause?” “Isn’t it suggestive that practically every one with whom you come in contact----” “My husband,” she retorted, quoting an instance against him. “Your husband has great natural calm, and spends eight hours a day out of the house. You have made this home, this really wonderful home, for those you love. No one admires the achievement more than I do. But you have sacrificed too much of yourself in doing it; and I’m not speaking of your physical strength. In this library, in which you are so fond of sitting, how many books have you ever read?” “I was a great reader as a girl,” she answered. “Which of these have you read in the last ten years?” She murmured that he perhaps hardly understood the demands upon her time. “You never read. You can’t,” he returned. “Since my first hour here I have been watching you, not your daughter. Her case is simple enough. You don’t read, Mrs. Royce, not because you have no time, but because you have no concentration. This is one of the many sacrifices you have made to your household--a serious one, and we must face the results. I have watched you each day carrying the morning papers about with you until evening, and then, if you read the headlines, it is as much as you can accomplish.” She had been staring at him as though in a trance, but now she came to, with a laugh. “My dear Dr. Despard,” she said, “if you were the mother of four children and the head----”