Superseded

l Misund

ertheless, whether she was walking up and down the paths or sitting on a bench, Miss Quincey had a certain expectant air, as if at any moment Dr. Cautley might come tearing round the cor

aturday the thirteenth of March. April and May went by; she had not seen him now

part of St. Sidwell's where Miss Cursiter and Miss Vivian lived in state. Each time he was walking very fast as usual, and he looked at her,

one for conduct so strange and unprecedented, and in any case Miss Quincey's knowledge of masculine motives was but small. Taken by itself it might have passed without any reason, as an oversight, a momentary lapse; but coupled with his complete abandonment of Camden Street North it looked ominous indeed.

ably lucid; every thought in it ground to excessive subtlety in the mill of her logic. She saw it all clearly. There had been some misunderstanding, some terrible mistake. She had forfeited his friendship through a blunder nameless but irrevocable. Once or twice she wondered if Mrs. Moon could be at the bottom of it-or Martha. Had her aunt carried out her dreadful threat of giving him a hint to

faithless swain who had forsaken Juliana; if Martha brought in the tea-tray she wondered when Dr. Cautley was coming back for another slice of Juliana's wedding-cake. Mrs. Moon referred to a certain abominable piece of confectionery now crumbling away on a shelf in the sideboard, where, with a breach in its side and its sugar turret in ruins, it seemed to nod at Miss Quincey with all sorts of satirical suggestions. And when Louisa sent her accounts of Teenie who lisped in German, Alexander who wrote Latin letters to his father, and Mildred who refused to read the New Testament in anything but Greek,

and on, turning over and over, and growing, growing, till there were millions, billions, trillions of them; oh, they were wonderful things those figures; you could go on watching them for ever if you were sharp enough; you could even-here Laura lowered her voice in awe of her own conception, for Laura was a mystic, a seer, a metaphysician, what you will-you could even think with them, if you knew how; in

she inquired on hearing herself address

dache. The Mad Hatter appeared to be absorbed in tracing

things. Either their heads ache or they are unhappy. You must be very unhappy. I know all about it." The p

the desk and cried as she had seen the Mad Hatter cry over her sums, a

s Quincey in her illness, and it was Rhoda's to keep an eye on her in her recovery, and instantly report the slightest threatening of a break-down. Miss Quincey's somewhat eccentric behavio

ous chair, Miss Quincey was easily worked into the right mood for confidences; indeed she was i

perfectly well?" so Rh

ttle afraid that taking so much arsenic may have disagreed with me. You know it is a deadly poison

ng about St. Sidwel

hoda. For some reason or other, my own fault, no doubt, I have lost

-Do you mean M

ot mean Mis

an-me then

lain-this is in confidence, Rhod

Cau

or how I have offended him, but he has

been busy-in fac

dly care to speak of it, it has been so very painful. My dear"-Miss Q

s done it to all his patients. H

ns of intimacy; as it was, she said with superior conviction, "My dear, I know Dr. Cautley. He has never cut me bef

ng. I wouldn't wor

, that I am under obligations to Dr. Cautley. I owe everything to him; I cannot tell you what he has done for me, and

he understood the desire of that innocent person, not for love, not for happiness, but just for leave to lay down her life for this friend, this deity of hers, to be co

med the best thing to say in the singula

sob in her throat. "It may," she replied with dign

ing things-he isn't, you know, he's not that sort; s

u have it-'ou

e thought of me; or better still

nk visibly from t

but I think it would look a little indelicate. Of course it would

ny way. It's the

is. But I think you can hardly judge of t

don't." Not for worlds would she hav

d asked me six months ago I should have told you that the thing was impossible, or rather, that in nine cases out of ten-I m

dear Miss Quincey

o you

worked up through the sallow of her cheek.) "And I'm sur

. And I think it has been bad for me. I wasn't used to it. Perhaps, if it had happened five-and-twenty y

silence, Miss Quincey dropped into a dream.

t to figures. Forty-five-thirty-he is thirty. Take twenty-fiv

but neither said: "He would

te prostrated by the re

could urge to soothe he

t know him

voice; it was the monotonous, m

othing could take from her the exq

*

te machan,"

Mistress was in school again, coaching a

e who fliest, who fliest about among things,

of the god in Miss Quincey's drawing-room, fluttering about

ng?" asked

een flying about and falling upon. 'Oh Lo

the student sighed heavily, for the Greek was hard. "He who has-he who h

"you mustn't murder them. '

and the student left the coac

nikate

er ears persistently, joyously, ironically-a

arrying off all the crowns and the judges' compliments at the end of the day. She loved the race for its own sake, this young athlete; and though she took the crowns and the compliments very much as a matter of course, she had come to look

thought it of Miss Quincey? And the really sad thing was that she did not think it of herself; it showed how empty of humanity her life had been. It was odd how these things happened. Miss Quincey was neither brilliant nor efficient, but she had made the most of herself; at least she had lived a life of grinding intellectual toil; the whole woman h

l ground-plan of human nature. And how she had scoffed at his "man's view"; how indignantly she had repulsed

had lost sight of the individual? Was the system so far in accordance with Nature that it

e had given her a friend with one hand and snatched him from her with the other. (If you came to think of it, it was hard that she who had so much already could have Bastian Cautley too, any day, to play with, or to keep-for her very own. There was not a bit of him that could by any

an understanding with him on that account. On the contrary, when she saw him the very next evening (poor Bastian had chosen his moment indiscreetly) she ende

uincey. At any rate, she said to hers