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LONE in the dingy sitting-room of the London lodging-house, Ethel Wynyard fixed eager eyes on the tiny burtsing leaves of the plane tree without. The coming of spring, and of Mr. Cartwright-these were all that concerned the convalescent. She knew that she loved the spring; as to Mr. Cartwright, she made no admissions to herself. She watched and waited for his daily visit, and thought and dreamed of it afterwards; and it may be correctly inferred that she knew more about her feeling towards the seasons than towards the young surgeon.

Six weeks before, she had come in a hansom to the door of the house; and, instead of dancing up the steps with the buoyancy of youth, had been carried in, fainting, with a shattered arm. The horse had started forward at the precise second that permitted a clutch at her skirt by the wheel. The cabman had found a poor little surgery round the corner; and thus had accident brought together a girl of exceptional force of character and a passionate devotee of science whom poverty threatened to snuff out.

Every trick that Nature could perform with shattered bits of bone had been played upon this arm; and it was only now that the road to recovery stretched open and fair. The pale face had already lost the deeper lines which suffering chisels, the two cheeks were beginning to fill out, the hazel eyes at intervals sparkled with bright vivacity. Youth and a vigorous constitution

drew her swiftly on to health. Professionally, the doctor had almost ceased to be useful; in another capacity-unperceived by either-he was administering great draughts of a marvellous tonic, not mentioned in that awe-inspiring list known as the Pharmacopoeia.

Watching and waiting and dreaming this morning, the girl was surprised when Sir William Hartley emerged from a brougham which drew up without. One says "emerged" advisely, for a portly Harley street surgeon, world-famed, does something more than get out; these two simple words fail to imply that his emergence is an event. The great man had a peculiar belief in the young surgeon, and at the latter's request had squeezed golden moments out of one day and had come to look at "the case." Ethel Wynyard was alarmed at his reappear

ance.

An instant later his tall form, round with an obesity that somehow looked wholesome, dwarfed the little room into a doll's house.

"Up? Good!" he said, with a kindly smile.

Then he stood and deliberately peered into her eyes with a steady gaze, direct, questioning. It seemed to the astonished girl as though he wished to make a diagnosis of her soul. As she had no malady there, and knew, as yet, of none in the heart, she threw her head back and met his curious inspection without flinching.

"Good!"

"I am glad you are pleased," said

Miss Wynyard, flushing; then she added with a touch of tartness, "I feel like an insect under a microscope."

"The insect," he said, still smiling, "does not answer back. Companion to Miss Druer, I understand?"

"Yes, Sir William."

His economy in language always brought terse answers. He seemed to say "My words are worth a pound each; I listen at the same price."

"You to return to her when she comes back from abroad?"

"Yes; the first of the month." "You've written to her about all this?"

He was relieved. Her candid glance seemed to say that Mr. Cartwright was her doctor-nothing more. Sir William knew a great deal about the human body; but there were still things for him to learn about a girl's heart.

"He's a consummate ass," he cried. "He has the ardor of a pioneer, the passion of a discoverer, the industry of a beaver-imagination, originality. He is on the road to a great discovery -he is close on the trail of a diseasewell do you know what's ruining him?"

"This question was fired with bullet-like precision at this indignant "live target." Many girls would have faltered a tearful denial to what seemed a direct charge. Ethel Wynyard only stared.

"He calls it 'humanity.' I call it folly. Accident settled him in the slums. He squanders there a genius that belongs to mankind. He has a beastly pride which declines the practical help that a dozen of us, who know his merits, would be glad to extend. There's one chance for him-overwork, illness; illness that will lay him up, that will ruin what he calls a practice.

If we get the beggar on a sick-bed we hope to make him do what we like afterwards provided he doesn't marry."

He paused for an instant. His lids. dropped under her steady gaze. She did not know that she had achieved a feat. Sir William Hartley seldom lowered his eyes. He went on without looking at her.

¶ "Marriage," he continued, "unless there is plenty of money, would mean the ruin of two people. He can't earn a living; he never will be able to. He would sink into a slum drudge, and die of a broken heart."

Miss Wynyard rallied bravely. The bluntness of the attack helped her to this. Had he wrapped in silken phrases the naked motive for his singular visit, outraged delicacy might not have leaped to defend her.

"Science," she said, with a calm which surprised herself and reassured her listener, "so far as I know, has no rival."

As she uttered the words she knew them to be untrue. The truculent surgeon had sounded the alarm. Ethel knew there was fire now-learned of it in the same instant in which she learned that it ought not to blaze.

"Good," he cried, "I wouldn't have talked so straight if I hadn't seen you were one of the right kind. I would not have come

"You need not have come," she interjected abruptly.

"Entirely superfluous; I see it now," he answered; "and," laughing, "so much the better. A girl, alone, has troubles sometimes; remember, I'm your friend. I mean it-money, advice, help to a position-don't hesitate; they are all at your service."

Perturbed Ethel saw only a bribe in genuine offers. She intimated ungraciously that his zeal for his friends was such that she preferred not to be numbered among them. He cheerfully responded that he had expected her to be "cross" with him, that he was her friend just the same, that it was as

much to her interests as to Cart wright's that she should know the facts; and then he went away.

The

"I am a worm," cried outraged Ethel Wynyard to the furniture. "I must dig into the ground, and hide myself for fear that a promising scientist will stop and pick me up-and forget to discover something. poor may die without a doctor, and I may break my heart, but that doesn't matter. He is 'on the trail of disease;' nothing must turn him aside. I'll accept him-yes, I will-this very morning-that is that is-if he asks me. No, I won't either; I won't say 'Yes,' just because a horrid person says I mustn't. I don't care for him-not the least bit-not that way. What did he say to this fat man who comes and bullies poor invalids? He must have yes, he must have-have said, that I cared; else, why should Sir William Hartley have taken the trouble to come here?"

course.

She bent her head and sank into her seat. With nerves unstrung by unaccustomed confident, self-conscious, vexed, she was positively rude.

The smile on the young surgeon's lips vanished, the eager greeting in his eyes was replaced by an expression of surprise; the bunch of violets in his hand fell unnoticed to the floor; his body stiffened beneath its ill-fitting clothes. He fumbled nervously with his hat, and addressed her with professional coldness. He would not have understood so quickly, perhaps, this shy, nervous man, so humble in the

presence of her whom the divine idealisation of love had glorified, had not Sir William Hartley prepared him for it.

"Girls are specially artful," Sir William had said, apparently a propos of nothing. "They pretend to be immensely grateful to doctors until they feel the springs of health. The doctor is the crutch. When the leg is strong he is flung aside-he is forgotten deliberately. Why not? He is associated with pain and suffering. Youth hates illness."

George Cartwright, alarmed at such cynical analysis of young ladies, had come with tremors this morning. He feared that he had based hopes on too slight a foundation. Perhaps she was only grateful and appreciative after all. He was thus in the mood to be sensitive to the slightest fall of temperature, and he found the thermometer below freezing point. He blamed himself for having misunderstood her, and ended a few professional directions by saying that his coming again was un

necessary.

She did not realize how forbidding her manner had been, and was doubly A humiliation more deep angry now.

than the elder surgeon's attempts to rescue the younger was to find that the younger surgeon did not need to be rescued.

"I feel-oh-ever so much better; quite well," she said hurriedly, "What -how-you must tell be about the account, Mr. Cartwright."

He made a half indignant gesture. "It will come in due course," he stammered, confused.

"As soon as convenient, please," was her lofty request.

"I hope I beg-when it comes. pray don't let it worry you. My profession makes a nominal charge only to young ladies who work."

C"Pardon me," she said with a high dignity; "Miss Rruer is very kind to me. I shall be able to send you a pound every month."

He bowed gravely, wounded to the quick.

She was perversely determined to display a grand independence; but a better motive also influenced her. Sir William had given her a vivid insight into Mr. Cartwright's poverty. flashed to her that she was under obligation also to the Harley street surgeon. Such weight was not to be borne.

¶ "Would you please ring the bell, Mr. Cartwright?"

The surprised surgeon obeyed, wondering if she were about to show him the door, seeking vainly a clue to her altered manner. When, however, the haughty young lady sent Jane for her purse he began to be angry.

"Sir William Hartley," she said, "has been here."

She opened her purse as she spoke a thin little purse by this time. She would owe no thanks to the gruff surgeon who wished, lest science lose a votary, to brush her out of the way so contemptuously.

Mr. Cartwright drew a breath of relief. He had feared she was going to insist on his taking "something on account."

"He came at my request," he said; "it had nothing to do with you."

"I wish to pay him," she answered shortly. "Those who are able to pay should not accept professional attendance for nothing."

Implacable Miss Wynyard counted out on the table six sovereigns and six shillings.

"I suppose," she said, "he would she said, "he would charge about three quineas."

"And you, being wealthy, prefer to pay double?"

"He came twice."
"Twice-surely not?"

"Yes, he came a second time and said I was getting on beautifully."

He turned abruptly and left the room, and then she picked up the little bunch of violets, held them to her lips, and burst into tears.

Had the angry surgeon looked

through the window as he stalked by he might have returned. As it was, he ran to his grimy surgery and began, in the little room above it, to prepare some gelatine for germ cultures. Two hours later he awoke to the knowledge that he had been sitting idle for about one hundred and nineteen minutes.

NO! I don't like that cough at all. I hoped that you would leave it behind you at Nice."

Miss Ethel Wynyard, her old self by this time, looked with apparent anxiety across the little round breakfast table as she uttered these words.

"My dear Ethel," answered Miss Druer, with that kindly smile which redeemed for a fleeting instant a face plain to ugliness; "it is a trifle. It's only a sneeze."

She was stout-there was no "almost" about it-and had long ago accepted a spinster's lot with cheerful resignation. She had not lived her thirty-seven years without offers, all so obviously made to her bank account that she had promptly declined, without becoming embittered.

"You may call it a sneeze," cried Ethel with decision, "but I call it more than that. I really think you ought to have advice."

"I shrink from new faces," answered Miss Druer.

Like many maiden ladies of her age and wealth, Miss Druer liked to have a doctor running in and out of the house at regular intervals. A safe and sound family doctor had come in to her at least once a week for years, but he had sold his practice in her absence.

"But this," protested Ethel, “is not the same as seeing a new face." ¶ "I admit that," was the prompt answer; "you have talked to me so much about this wonderful young surgeon of yours

"Please don't call him mine." ¶ "Well, then, the person who treated you."