Dr. Paull's Theory: A Romance

At first Hugh felt and seemed crushed. He had thought of many difficulties and troubles that might await him in his married life, but the one thing which had not entered into his calculations—Lilia’s death—was the unexpected occurrence which happened.

He had sometimes felt, from the first beginning of their married life, that something was hanging over him—some fatality. The whole story of his acquaintance with the Pyms was so strange, that the memory of it oppressed him. Perhaps this accounted for the feeling of discomfort which was now and then almost a dread of the future.

There were moments when he had thought that perhaps he was destined to die early; and he had made his will carefully, after much consultation with Mr. Mervyn, who was always, as it were, ready to hand during his short married life. Never, never once did he think he was to lose his beautiful tormentor, and so tragically.

At first he was prostrate. No one could rouse him. His father came to him and stayed. Dr. Hildyard spent his Sundays at the Pinewood. But efforts to coax and even startle him out of his gloom were fruitless. For a whole year he could not shake off the vivid recollection of what none but himself knew—the crowning horror of Lilia’s death-bed, her awful request, and his promise.

But through all this darkness of soul his faith did not waver. He reproached himself bitterly that he had not insisted more, struggled more, to help Lilia in her uncertainty, her unbelief. He blamed himself for her dying blasphemy, and for what he considered his cowardice in promising to kill himself. He went through their short life together over and over again, telling himself that at this juncture he ought to have said and done this thing, at such another that. He spent his days in listless wanderings about the Pinewood; his nights, or the best part of them, in feverish study, which availed him little or nothing. Thus passed the first year of his widowerhood.

Then came another sharp shock—the death of his good, kind friend, Dr. Hildyard, after a short illness of ten days.

During those ten days of close attendance upon his patron, Hugh’s eyes were opened. He saw that, the existence of which in a human being he had never suspected, never believed possible, a lofty soul.

Doctors are proverbially the worst patients. Dr. Hildyard, well aware that this was the end of his career, was a little impatient, perhaps, as to remedies which could not possibly reverse the fiat. In a few days his soul would be required of him, he knew that. He bore his physical agony with stoicism; his anxiety to leave his affairs in perfect order was so intense, it was a greater soporific than any narcotic. He talked much and often, between the paroxysms, to the young man in whose genius his faith had never wavered. He told his life—the difficulties he had successfully fought against and overcome, the awful temptations he had struggled with to the bitter end, the enmities which had dogged his footsteps and poisoned his simplest enjoyments—to Hugh. Each day of Dr. Hildyard’s existence, each day of that man who was supposed to be one of the most enviable beings in creation, who was in receipt of splendid fees, courted by all classes, the much-lauded hero of the medical press and the secretly hated of all the unsuccessful of the faculty (and their name is legion), was a miniature martyrdom; and he was awaiting his release with eager joy—a joy only damped by remorse that he had not done better, had not been a more faithful servant of the Giver of All.

“The miserable way in which I have crawled through my difficulties!” he wailed to his protégé. “Paull, never, never, fly low! Soar over your temptations and troubles, or when you come to die you will be ashamed of yourself, like I am!”

It was Dr. Hildyard’s exalted opinion of what a man should be, that first abashed, then roused, Hugh to cast aside self and live a new life.

Very soon after his friend’s death he set himself resolutely to a fresh beginning.

He had been strongly recommended by Dr. Hildyard to the influential men who came to shake his hand for the last time; and his start in practice as a specialist in nerve cases was made easy to him.

He took a house recently vacated by a well-known physician in a street frequented by doctors near Regent Street, and soon had plenty of patients, mostly former patients of Dr. Hildyard’s, who already knew him by repute. Before five years were over he had made some remarkable cures, had contributed some original and, in certain cases, startling papers on obscure nervous diseases to the leading medical journals, and was elected to appointments in four metropolitan hospitals.

Then he was consulted by royalty, and his private practice doubled itself. Ten years passed away, fifteen—it was now nineteen years since the awful day of Lilia’s death—and Dr. Hugh Paull was not only known throughout the English-speaking world, but his works were translated into French, German, and Italian, and his name was honoured by the medical profession in all countries.

His private life might be summed up in one word—Ralph.

Ralph was the name he had allotted to the puny pale babe who had been the unconscious instrument of his salvation from self-murder.

Ralph had been the name of an invalid uncle, his father’s younger brother, of whom he had pleasant childish recollections—a gentle, white-faced young man stretched on a couch in a pretty garden, who had seemed to know exactly what little boys liked, and to let them have it. So when he stood, one of the little group of black-garmented persons at the old stone font in the Pinewood church, and Mr. Mervyn said, “Name this child,” he remembered his uncle and said “Ralph.”

The delicate babe with the thoughtful blue eyes grew slowly and painfully from babyhood into childhood, from childhood into youth. At first Hugh felt the responsibility of being father and mother in one to the fragile boy—a heavy care. The child was always in his mind, an anxiety that never left him.

One day he had gone to a well-known educationist almost in despair. After detailing his experiments in nursery training, which up to then seemed a failure, he said, “What am I to do?”

“Leave the child alone, like I left mine,” said the authority. “Get him a good nurse, and don’t interfere with her without necessity. When you have done with the nurse, get him a good governess; then send him to school.”

To Hugh, who had hitherto acted as a head-gardener devoted to one sickly plant, the advice seemed rough. But he plucked up courage, and acted upon it.

The boy grew up without many complications; but he was a strange, silent lad. His two characteristics were an unappeasable love of study and a concentrated, but undemonstrative, devotion to his father.

From the beginning of the change in Hugh, when he first began his professional life in London, it was his custom to spend Saturday and Sunday at the Pinewood. The trio—the tall, now gaunt and careworn-looking, man; the thin, effeminate boy, and the mastiff Nero, who always dogged their heels (an immediate descendant of Hugh’s first acquaintance at the Pinewood)—were familiar figures to the country folk, who were attached to Dr. Paull with an attachment born of his unvarying justice and kindliness.

Following the advice given by the authority, Ralph’s instruction in matters of faith and dogma was strictly ordinary and orthodox; and remembering the result of Lilia’s peculiar up-bringing, Hugh was careful to throw his son into the company of others of his own age as much as possible. He failed to see what others saw—that the boy could not endure the companionship of his fellows, and only suffered it because it was his father’s will.

Meanwhile, Ralph showed great aptitude for science, and at nineteen was, to his great delight, appointed secretary to the famous geologist W——, who had been one of his grandfather Sir Roderick’s intimate friends. At the time of the second storm that shook Dr. Paull’s life to its foundations, Ralph was away on a walking tour with the great scientist. Hugh Paull was alone in his town house.

He was sitting at the large dining-table in the big, silent room. The thin, dark-eyed man, whose prematurely white hair added a dignity to the pensive beauty of his face, would have been a suggestive figure to an imaginative painter. As he slowly ate his frugal dinner, his eyes fixed as he continued some important train of thought, now and then leaning back in his chair, and absently crumbling his bread, while the old butler Jones hovered noiselessly about in the background, this picture of well-appointed solitude might have been named “Successful, but alone.” Perhaps never, until Ralph went on this tour, had Hugh so realised his desolation.

It was the height of the London season, and that very day he had had three important consultations beside hospital and other work. But the silence of the huge, quiet house oppressed him. He found it tiresome to eat. He was planning to tire himself further by preparing a paper on a recent case for the Lancet when a carriage drove up to the door, and there was a somewhat violent peal of the hall bell.

Jones, who had been butler to Dr. Hildyard till his death, and then accepted service with Hugh in preference to any other, knew his rules thoroughly. He was a spare little man, well fitted for his vocation; for he had a respectful, almost soothing manner, which softened the denials he had so often to give to nerve-patients wild to obtain the immediate attendance of the great authority, Dr. Paull.

He went silently out, and gently opened the street door. The smart single brougham and pair drawn up before the house was as unfamiliar to him as were the two gentlemen standing on the doorstep, one of whom was tall and fair, the other being short and dark, with piercing black eyes and a thick black moustache. Both were dressed in the height of fashion; in fact, were evidently petits-maîtres.

It was the tall, fair man who, slightly lifting his hat, said in good English, but with a foreign accent:

“Can we see Dr. Hugh Paull at once?”

The bold demand—for Hugh was now a “consulting physician,” to be approached through the patient’s ordinary medical attendant—nearly deprived poor Jones of breath. He gave but one gasp only though, and remembering these were foreigners and ignoramuses in medical etiquette, recovered himself, and said politely, but in a somewhat shocked tone of voice:

“I am very sorry, sir, but that is quite impossible.”

The fair man turned to the dark one with a smile, and said something rapidly in a foreign tongue, upon which the dark young man produced a cardcase and presented Jones with his card, saying, “Please, you will give the docteur,” in broken and very foreign-sounding English.

Jones, seeing the word “Prince” prefixed to a, to him, unreadable and unpronounceable name, was somewhat startled, for the title meant royalty to his British mind. For a moment he was puzzled; then, saying, “Please, will you step this way?” he hurried along the bare stone hall, and ushering the distinguished visitors into the cheerless waiting-room, with the skylight, rows of dining-room chairs against the walls, and an old dining-table, whose dingy cloth was strewn with as dingily-covered volumes of illustrated journals, hurried to his master with the card.

Hugh glanced at it listlessly, read “Le Prince Andriocchi,” and laid it aside. Stray patients, arriving at odd moments, were always dismissed with a certain formula, and Hugh was not giving a second thought to the Prince Andriocchi or his card when an anxious voice piped at his elbow, “What am I to say, sir?” and turning, he saw Jones watching him in evident dismay.

“Say?” he asked. “To whom?”

“To the prince, sir! I took him into the waiting-room.”

“You took him into the waiting-room?” repeated Hugh, hardly believing his own ears.

For a patient to be admitted outside regular hours and against all rule was a most unwonted occurrence, and by Jones the impregnable, the unassailable! Had a golden talisman—No! such an idea was a treason to the faithful old servant.

“I thought as he was a prince, sir,” stammered Jones.

“Oh, well, never mind! I will explain to him that I cannot see him now,” said Dr. Paull, good-naturedly, rising and going to the waiting-room.

The two men were seated, but rose and bowed as he entered. The tall fair man, who had candid blue eyes and an insinuating smile, informed Hugh, in laboured but fairly correct English, that they had been recommended to consult him by the Spanish ambassador, whose son had been cured by him last season in so marvellous a manner.

“But your highness is surely not Spanish?” asked Hugh, glancing at the card he still held between his fingers.

“The prince,” said the fair man, bowing deferentially in the direction of the dark little gentleman, who was watching them while he nervously twisted his moustache, “is from Italy—is Italien. It is madame la princesse who is from the land of chivalry. It is for madame la princesse that we come to visit you.”

Hugh bowed.

“She is not very ill, I hope?” he said, awkwardly.

He had had but little experience of the denizens of other countries, and this had been of their learned men, who have a family likeness no matter in what latitude they are born. These two élégants embarrassed him.

“How shall I explain?” said the fair man, knitting his brow and gazing at the skylight. “You speak French? No? My friend the prince speak French as Italien. I am sorry. But I tell you, monsieur le docteur, best way I can: you so clever, you understand me with all my faults. M. le prince here, he marry this lady, who is the daughter of the Duke de Saldanhés. You know his name, of course? He is great at the Court of Spain. You must surely hear that the princesse is one of the most beautiful ladies in all the world; for the papers de Société, as you call them, tell everyone that. The princesse adore M. le prince; he adore her. But soon after the noces madame becomes more delicate, and she likes not to walk or drive; she shows no inclination for the world; she goes much to the church, and gets pâle, maigre. In the truth, monsieur le docteur, she shows symptoms of being, what you call, a sainte.”

The fair man raised his eyebrows, and looked so oddly at Dr. Paull as he half-whispered the last sentence, that Hugh felt inclined to laugh.

“I fear I cannot presume to cure a disposition to sanctity, sir,” he said. His voice sounded rough, in contra-distinction to the suave, delicately-pitched tones of his interlocutor. “I try to cure nervous diseases; I cannot cure a tendency which the most exacting husband can scarcely disapprove.”

“Monsieur is Catholique?” insinuated the fair man, sweetly.

“I—what? I beg your pardon, sir, but you took me by surprise,” added Hugh, his thin face flushing.

Then he explained that if there were any symptoms of physical disease he would see the princesse with pleasure, but that he did not prescribe for the mind.

The fair man, whose white satin manners and womanish grace were peculiarly repugnant to Hugh, rapidly translated Dr. Paull’s speech to the prince in Italian (a language with which Hugh had a slight acquaintance), and the prince made a voluble reply, which touched Hugh as being the earnest appeal of a man who was in considerable anxiety on the subject of his wife.

“I have understood his highness,” he said, somewhat dryly, when the count (he had been addressed as such by the prince) turned towards him to interpret; “and I will willingly see the lady and prescribe for her if it be in my power to do her any good, which I doubt.”

“Ah! sir; but we do not doubt it,” said the count with enthusiasm. “Nor did le Docteur Fosterre, who saw her it is two days ago, but whose medicine the princesse will not accept.”

“Dr. Foster saw her?” asked Hugh, puzzled. (Dr. Foster was a nerve-doctor with a large fashionable practice, much in favour with lady patients.) “I fear if Dr. Foster has been unsuccessful, I can do nothing.”

Further persuasions on the part of the count, who interpreted everything to his princely friend, led to Hugh’s provisional promise that after two days he would see the lady. He was to meet Dr. Foster in consultation on the morrow, and intended to talk with him on the subject. Then a difficulty was explained to him: the princess objected to doctors in toto. The meeting must be brought about by stratagem. The great Dr. B—— S—— had fallen in with this arrangement, and had had a long interview with the princess one evening at the Italian Embassy in Paris without her realising that he was one of the obnoxious faculty until it was over.

“But could he do nothing?” asked Hugh, astonished.

“Monsieur, he said the same as the Docteur Z. in Rome, and your Docteur Fosterre here in Londres. The princesse has a disease which is rare in one who has all the world at her charming feet. She likes not life, she longs for death, or, let us say, the heavens.”

“Which, interpreted, means the lady is a spoilt creature, and is thoroughly discontented,” thought Hugh, with a smile of amusement, after his visitors had oppressed him with a profusion of thanks, had bowed themselves out, and driven off in the carriage. At first the interview amused him; but after the novelty had worn off, he felt a distaste for the task he had undertaken, neither an onerous nor an unpleasant one, the interviewing of a beautiful and evidently amiable Spanish lady. But Hugh disliked women as patients even more than he disliked them as companions. His liking for the sex lay buried in Lilia’s grave.

After his consultation with Dr. Foster next day, he took him aside and told him of the prince’s visit and request.

“I thought they would come to you,” said Dr. Foster, a short, stout little man, his eyes twinkling. “Curious fellow, that count, isn’t he? I can’t make him out. Means well, though, I daresay. A sort of cousin of the prince’s, I understand. You know all about the family, don’t you? No? Well, the Andriocchis are one of the most ancient Italian families. He came into everything a couple of years ago, at his father’s death. He is only six-and-twenty, though he looks older. I saw him here the first season. He got into a fast set, and did no good. Last year his family married him. Families in those countries always sort the young folks and couple them, you know. Wonderful match—a great beauty—daughter of one of those awfully blue-blooded Spanish grandees, Duke de Saldanhés, great favourite at Court. She’s a charming woman, but——” Dr. Foster shook his head, and looked whole volumes of wisdom.

“But?” asked Hugh, suddenly interested and sorry. He did not know why.

“Well, perhaps you’ll find out. She baffled me; that’s all I know. First I thought there might be a suicidal tendency, or simple melancholia. Soon gave up that idea—one of the keenest-witted women I ever met. She gives you one look out of those lamps of eyes of hers, and tots you up pretty correctly, I can tell you. No, no! She’s as sane as you or I—saner perhaps, if the truth were known! But there’s something wrong somewhere. Whether it’s fretting, or remorse—well, it’s no use speculating. My opinion is this—she’s wretchedly ill; and before she can get any better, the cause of it must be got at, and treated. Perhaps you’ll do it. B—— S—— seems to have failed, and I confess myself nowhere.”

Dr. Paull felt less distaste for his task after this interview with his colleague: in fact, his professional interest was awakened; and when three, then four days passed without his being summoned by the prince, his surprise was flavoured with something akin to a feeling of disappointment.

On the fifth day, when he was snatching a hasty breakfast, the prince’s brougham drove up to the door, and the count alighted alone, and sent in a message—might he see the doctor for one minute?

“Show him in here,” said Hugh.

Accordingly the count entered, apologising for his intrusion.

“It was necessaire that I find you early, docteur,” he said. “An opportunity comes that you see madame la princesse to-night. She has consented to visit the Covent Theatre, to see the new opera.”

“But, excuse me, I do not understand,” said Dr. Paull, somewhat dryly. “I do not go to theatres and operas. I have no time, still less should I go there to see patients.”

The count explained, almost pathetically, that the prince had naturally feared that this was the case. “And, in anticipation of your refusal, monsieur, I just paid visit to the Lady Forwood, to ask her to join in our appeal.”

He drew a note from his breast-pocket. It was from Lady Forwood, the wife of the popular baronet, Sir David Forwood, who had been Hugh’s friend for many years. Lady Forwood was the only woman, with the exception of his sisters, with whom Dr. Paull was at all familiar. She was not only a good woman, but was possessed of the feminine gift of tact in a marked degree.

“My dear Doctor” (she wrote),—“I am quite thankful to hear you have consented to see my old friend Mercedes. As I know you always like to have a good look at your patients, I venture to propose that you should spare us half-an-hour, and come to our box at Covent Garden to-night. It is exactly opposite the Prince Andriocchi’s, and you will be able to judge of my poor friend all the better, because she will not know you are looking at her. Afterwards, we can introduce you to her.

“P. S.—The number of our box is 9. I will leave word at the door that you are coming.”

Hugh wavered; but before he knew that he had consented to the fair letter-writer’s proposition, the count had left him, and he could hardly withdraw his half-reluctant consent.

“I suppose I must go,” he told himself.

He disliked the proceeding altogether. The sense that he was doing that which he reprehended in others, acting for the great of this world in a manner he would certainly not act for the lowly, oppressed him throughout the day.

“It is a step in the wrong direction,” he told himself, as he stood before the glass, arranging that conventional white tie which he professed to disdain, with “the rest of men’s enforced toggery,” as he called the swallowtails and chimneypots, “but I have let myself in for it somehow, and must go through with it.”

He would not have out his carriage; he took a hansom to the opera house. On entering, he stood amazed! There had been a drawing-room that day, and the ladies who were alighting from their carriages and sailing and sweeping through the entrance-hall and up the staircase were in all the bravery of silk, satin, and velvet, and literally ablaze with jewels. The heated air was scented with the perfumes they used, and with the odour of the Court bouquets they carried. The scene of excessive luxury was foreign to the severe simplicity of Dr. Paull’s hard-working life.

“I suppose all this is good for trade,” he thought, as he made his way through the glittering throng to box 9, “but it seems a queer way for mortals to spend their time.”

He was ushered into the box just as the final bars of the National Anthem were being played, for it was a semi-State performance in honour of a foreign potentate. Lady Forwood, a fair young dame with a bright face, was standing in front of the box. She turned to welcome him.

“It is very good, indeed, of you to come,” she said, as she warmly shook hands. “Don’t say, No! David and I flatter ourselves we understand you pretty well. I know that nothing but a sense of duty brings you here. However, now that you are here, you may as well have a good look at it all. Take that chair. David is at the House. He may look in, but not till late; there is some important debate on to-night. Now, tell me, it is a fine sight, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is,” said Hugh.

The orchestra had struck up the spirited introduction to the new opera, and the unaccustomed sounds of bright music insensibly raised his spirits. The coup-d’œil of the gigantic horseshoe of tiers of crimson-curtained boxes filled with ladies in brilliant attire, white and the palest tints predominating, was magnificent.

“I never imagined women could look so like flowers,” said he, honestly.

“I thought you would think better of us when you knew a little more about us!” laughed Lady Forwood, who was scanning the house through her lorgnettes. “There! Mercedes has just come in! How lovely she looks! What a magnificent dress! I suppose she was at the drawing-room. I went last time, so I was not there to-day.”

“Where?” said Hugh, drawing back a little, and feeling like a conspirator.

“Not in the chandelier! and not exactly in the pit,” said Lady Forwood, laughingly. “Don’t be shocked at me! I positively can’t help teasing people. Look at the third from the royal box. There, she is just settling herself, and throwing off her mantilla—the lady in white.”

Hugh was looking at the third box to the left of the royalties.

“Take my glass,” said Lady Forwood, “and look at the third box to the right of the royal people. Make haste, for in another minute she may settle herself behind the curtain and stay there the whole evening. It would be just like her.”

Hugh focussed the glass, and with a singular sensation that was almost a thrill, he gazed at a lovely girl who was leaning forward glancing round the house. She was pale with a waxen pallor; her black hair was dressed high, and studded with pearls. She wore a white velvet gown, a shade whiter than her beautifully moulded bust and arms, and this appeared to be sewn with pearls. So youthful was her slender form that, had Hugh not recognized the Prince Andriocchi and his friend the count hovering in the background, he would hardly have believed this could be the new patient about whom so much fuss had been made.

“She is quite a girl!” he said, in surprise, turning to Lady Forwood.

“Why not?” asked she. “She was only married a year ago. Spanish girls marry young.”

“But, from what you said, I fancied you had been girl friends,” said Hugh, without thinking.

“How like you, to say that!” said Lady Forwood, with a good-natured laugh, as Hugh, forgetting his dislike to the rôle of “spy,” scrutinised her highness closely through the glasses. “That is almost on a par with your speech to the Princess M——, one of the stories she always tells to show what a bear you are, sir!”

“I do not remember saying anything to the Princess M——,” said Hugh, laying down the lorgnette.

“You don’t remember her playing to you, and your saying that you had never cared for any playing except that of a relation of yours?”

“No,” said Hugh, who was beginning to think deeply on the subject of his new “case;” and his thoughts were curious, and to him utterly unexpected. “But what did I say to you that was bearish just now, Lady Forwood? I don’t care if her Royal Highness tells anecdotes about me or not—it amuses her, and doesn’t harm me. But I cannot be misunderstood by you.”

“That pretty speech makes up for the rude one,” said Lady Forwood, smiling. “You seemed surprised that Mercedes and I were girl friends. Of course I am her senior by some years. I will tell you how it was. Her parents were anxious about her as a child, she was such a delicate, mopy little thing. So they sent her to a convent school at the seaside in England. I was what you might call a sixth-form girl when she came; and, as the nuns thought me steady-going, they gave her to me to look after specially. I was to be a sort of deputy-mamma; and she grew very fond of me, poor little thing!”

“Why do you say ‘poor little thing’?” asked Hugh.

“Oh, Mercedes has always been peculiar,” said Lady Forwood. “The nuns thought her cold and apathetic. I knew very differently! There is fire underneath that cold manner of hers—she is the most passionate girl, I think, I ever met! And her parents have been idiots enough to marry her to that man!”

“You do not approve of the prince?” asked Hugh.

“Hush! We really must not talk any more, people will notice us,” said Lady Forwood, directing her lorgnettes towards the stage, where the prima-donna had just finished an air which was evidently greatly to the taste of the pit and gallery.

Hugh leaned back and during the remainder of the first act watched the Princess Andriocchi as narrowly as he could without being specially noticed.

She sat perfectly still at first, leaning back, her white profile cameo-like against the crimson curtain, her hands lying listlessly in her lap. She appeared to be watching the stage, but in reality her eyes were more than half veiled by their heavy lids. Through the glass he could see that her exquisite little ears were transparent as wax.

“Poor child!” thought Hugh, compassionately. He thought he knew now why the great B—— S—— and the clever Dr. Foster could neither of them relieve the little princess of her malaise. The cause was mental.

He had almost arrived at a resolution to “get out of the affair,” if he possibly could, when (to his absent mind, with a strange suddenness) down came the curtain upon the first act among the plaudits of the house, and people began to move and stand up; there was a general air of awakening to life of the attentive audience.

“Well,” said Lady Forwood, turning to him, “you must confess it is a charming opera! The next thing to be done is to take me over to see Mercedes.”

But this Hugh steadily refused to do.

Lady Forwood was still endeavouring to persuade him by all the arguments at her command, when the box-door opened, and the count entered.

He bowed profoundly to Lady Forwood, and offered his hand deferentially to Hugh, who scrutinised him with a new misgiving. Was this man who shadowed the young pair in any way connected with that young creature’s unhappiness? He was, certainly, the sort of man that some women would consider fascinating, with his persuasive manners and his fair, handsome face.

He had brought a message to Lady Forwood: the princess wished to come round to her box—would it be convenient?

Lady Forwood clapped her hands with evident delight.

Hugh had not known her in this childlike, unaffected mood.

“Convenient? Splendid!” she said to the count, who at once vanished.

“Could anything be better?” she asked Hugh. “You will see her just as she really is when she is talking to her ‘mammy,’ as she calls me. What is the matter?” she said, suddenly, in a changed voice, for she saw her pale friend wince and bite his lip.

“Nothing, I assure you,” he said, earnestly, recovering himself. That word “mammy” had not been heard by him since Lilia had last addressed Mrs. Mervyn by the tender nickname in his presence.

What seeming trifles are the feather-weights that balance human destinies! But for the effect produced upon Hugh by that one word, he would have made an excuse, and missed——

What? As he stood hesitating, the box-door opened, and the princess came in.

A girl, with the carriage of a young queen.

Hugh stood back, and stared at the beautiful, dark young creature, in her magnificent robe of white velvet, embroidered with seed pearls, with but one feeling—amazement.

The princess gave him a careless glance, with a half-nod, in return for his obeisance, as Lady Forwood introduced him, and seated herself by her friend.

She murmured something in a low voice to Lady Forwood, upon which the English lady blushed and looked annoyed. After some whispering, Lady Forwood turned to Hugh with a beseeching look.

“I am going to test your friendship to the utmost,” she said, pleadingly. “I am half afraid to ask you, but you will understand,” she added, meaningly. “I want you to go down and see if Sir David has arrived; there is nothing particular to hear for the next ten minutes.”

“With pleasure,” said Hugh, understanding that the little princess had some secret to tell her friend, and that he was not wanted for the next quarter-of-an-hour.

“A spoilt beauty,” he thought, as he strolled along the lobbies. “I should like to know how any physician can cure that, unless he inoculates her with the smallpox!”

He had hardly left the box before the princess’ manner changed. She clasped her friend’s hand, and with her lovely face all quivering, the corners of her lips drooping, and her great eyes full of tears, she almost sobbed:

“Oh, mammy, mammy! It is true!—it is true!”

“My dear, what is true? You have been thinking such strange things!” said Lady Forwood, distressed and worried, for she loved the unhappy little creature. “You have got some silly notions into your head, and you imagine all sorts of nonsense.”

“Listen!” said Mercedes, glancing round and speaking low. “To-day he told me that he and the count would go on the river. I had to go to the Court alone. Well, I thought I would ask the ambassadress to take me—it would be not so long—she has the entrée, as you call it. She did take me. Coming back, my carriage got into a number of other carriages, and I saw—him.”

“The prince? Well, why not?” asked Lady Forwood.

“I saw him—and her—the woman whose portrait I found!” said Mercedes, in a tone of anguish.

“Well, my dear,”—Lady Forwood spoke in a matter-of-fact manner, although she was anathematising the prince for his flagrant conduct in being publicly seen with the beautiful French actress whose name had been coupled with his in society gossip—“I daresay he will be able to explain it all to you, if, indeed, you were not mistaken.”

“How—explain?” asked Mercedes, bitterly. “How explain a lie, mammy?”

“Hush!” said Lady Forwood, uneasily. “My dear, I never should have worried David if I had seen him with fifty women!”

“That—is different!” said the princess. “Mammy, you love each other!”

Lady Forwood began a brisk lecture:

“My child, you are not fit to be out in the world at all,” she said. “You ought to have come to me for a year’s instruction before you were married, instead of going straight to the altar from the convent. You know absolutely nothing about men. Men’s ways are not women’s ways. The world allows them their liberty; and if their wives don’t allow it them also, they will neglect their wives for the world, and the wives will be to blame.”

And she held forth on this somewhat loose doctrine so subtly that the princess’ expression gradually changed from grieved perplexity to a sort of placid resignation.

“A man is not bad who allows a lady acquaintance to take him some distance in her carriage,” went on Lady Forwood, didactically. “You will be wiser by-and-by, darling. You will take it for granted that men are better than they seem.”

“The count is good,” said Mercedes, sorrowfully. “He is so kind to me!”

“The count is no better than his neighbours,” said Lady Forwood, sharply, feeling that from Scylla she was nearing Charybdis. “Mercedes, you must rouse yourself, and go into society. Then you will not brood on the subject of your husband. You can’t change him, at least, not all of a sudden, so you must put up with him.”

“The count says——” began Mercedes.

“Don’t talk about the count to me! You know my opinion of Italians, my dear. You shall be introduced to some Englishmen. You must know this friend of ours, that you made me turn out of the box just now. David says he is the best man he ever met.”

At this moment Hugh knocked at the box-door. He had been outside in the cool night. He had not seen Sir David; he had not expected to do so. He had watched the arrival of some late comers, and, unnoticed by them, had seen the Prince Andriocchi and his friend the count come out of the opera house, light their cigarettes, and remain in close conversation for a few minutes, after which they interchanged a glance of intelligence; the prince hailed a hansom and drove off, and the count reentered the theatre.

So he interpreted the steady gaze which Mercedes fixed upon him as he told Lady Forwood there was no sign of her husband’s arrival as a mute questioning as to the whereabouts of the prince, the count having established himself alone in the opposite box.

And the next occurrence startled him. The curtain was rising; he was turning to take his seat at the back of the box, when the princess suddenly leant towards Lady Forwood:

“Mammy, I have seen this—gentleman—before!” she said. “Where?” she added, turning to Hugh.

He smiled, amused at the startled look in her gazelle eyes.

“You have the advantage of me, princess,” he said. “I do not think I have had the honour of meeting you before to-night. And yet——”

He was puzzled. Looking at her steadily, there was something in the wistful, childish beauty of Mercedes’ oval face which was familiar. She had some resemblance to someone he had seen somewhere. But, even as he ransacked his memory, the likeness eluded him, as a forgotten name will refuse to repeat itself when the thinker struggles to recall it.

“You two had better talk over your previous acquaintance behind the curtain, I think,” said Lady Forwood.

Hugh took the hint. He drew his chair nearer to the princess, and asked her where they possibly could have met, while Lady Forwood became absorbed in the performance.

“You have been much in England; anyone can tell that who hears you speak,” he said. “But have you been in London?”

“Never, till now,” said Mercedes, still scrutinising him with a feeling of uneasiness, for she felt that this worn-looking but attractive man, with the prematurely white hair, was no stranger to her, yet she could not recall how or when she had seen him. “I have lived seven—no, eight years in the convent at B——. That is where mammy and I were together” (with an affectionate look towards her friend); “but to London I came—not—once! When I returned to Spain, we went by Newhaven. This is the first time I see—London.”

“Curious!” said Hugh, half to himself.

The resemblance to someone he had known was stronger while she was speaking, and yet there was nothing definite about it. It stirred him strangely; but what the emotion was which disturbed him and quickened his ordinarily sluggish pulses, he could not tell.

“Were you ever in Surrey?” he suggested, after a few minutes’ fruitless mental searching.

“Never in any place here but the convent,” she said, decidedly. “But you, sir. Perhaps you were in B—— sometime?”

“Never,” said Hugh.

“Then you have, perhaps, been in my country—in Spain?”

“Not yet,” said Hugh.

They both smiled; and then, suddenly remembering that they were strangers, talked more reservedly of the music, which the princess appeared to know well.

“I had the pianoforte score for a week,” she informed Dr. Paull. “The composer lent me his manuscript. I played it for him when he was in Madrid.”

She was telling Hugh of what was to come during the ensuing acts, when the box-door opened, and the count came in.

“The prince requested me to escort you home at the end of the act, madame la princesse,” he said in English, bowing very slightly to Dr. Paull.

“But my husband? Where is he, monsieur?”

The count shrugged his shoulders, with an appealing smile, to Lady Forwood.

“He must go to the club for an hour, madame. When you arrive at the house, he will without doubt be there.”

Mercedes sat silent till the close of the act, then she rose abruptly, held out her hand to Lady Forwood, said “Adieu, monsieur,” with a melancholy little smile, to Hugh, and left the box on the count’s arm.

“Well?” said Lady Forwood, eagerly, when the two were alone.

“Well?” he repeated, coolly.

Some glamour, under the influence of which he had unbent—had forgotten his ordinary almost apathy to his surroundings—had passed away. He was on guard again.

“Tell me frankly what you think of her. I love her so much!” said Lady Forwood, eagerly and honestly.

“There is nothing the matter with her—physically,” said Hugh.

“But—mentally?”

“As I told her husband, I do not profess to cure the mind.”

“Do you not see how miserable she is, Dr. Paull? We must do something for her,” said Lady Forwood, energetically. “You can, even more than I. She wants friends. She wants some powerful mind to control hers, and lead her to live her own life, without reference to the prince. That wretched young man! He neglects her shamefully; and how he can throw her with that count as he does—everyone is talking about it!”

“My dear Lady Forwood, what can I do?” asked Hugh, helplessly. Had she spoken to him thus before he had met Mercedes, he would have thought she was taking leave of her senses. Oddly enough, now, her appeal did not strike him as in any way peculiar. “I could see her professionally, and give her a few hints; but I could not talk to her openly, as you could,” he added, hesitatingly.

“What I want is for her to take an interest in something, Dr. Paull. I don’t mean an ordinary interest—but something that will occupy her energies, will distract her from brooding over her wrongs. Oh, she is wronged, poor child! David thinks very badly of the prince. I would not believe anything so dreadful of a fellow-creature. Oh, dear me, here is David!”

A portly, pleasant-looking man, who seemed as if the world suited him, and he it, came in with a “Hulloa! You don’t look best pleased to see me, my dear! I don’t wonder. It isn’t often she gets you all to herself, is it, Paull? Well, we’ve won. Majority of seventeen for our motion.”

Sir David talked away about the debate just over; and as soon as he could take leave, Hugh quitted the theatre.

Walking through the streets, under the dark night sky, he seemed awakening from some vivid dream, in which he had behaved in a manner in which he would certainly not have behaved when awake.

Letting himself in with his key, he rang for Jones.

“You can go to bed. I shall sit up to do some work,” he said.

“You will find the letters in the library, sir,” said Jones, with extra gravity.

“Very well,” said Hugh. Then he flung himself into a chair, and began to think.

“That girl and I have met before,” he mused. “But how?—when? When I looked into her eyes, I felt she understood me ... and—I understand her. What on earth induced Lady Forwood to ask me to look after her?”

He almost laughed. Here, in the big, lonely house, which for years had been as a hermitage to him, the idea of his being asked to become mentor to a lovely Spanish princess seemed an absurdity.

“Let me see what Grantley has to say about Spain and the Spaniards,” he said to himself, going to the book-shelves and taking down a volume.

Captain Grantley was a patient of his, who had travelled in Spain, and recorded his experiences in print. For the next half-hour Hugh was reading about bullfights, romantic ruins seen by moonlight, mantillas, dark-eyed beauties, unpleasant railway journeys, and stuffy hostelries where the diet appeared to be garlic fried in oil. Nothing seemed to remind him of his princess; but he was still reading on, when a cab drove up, and there was a ring at the hall bell.

“At this hour!” (It was nearly midnight.) He went into the hall, unbarred and opened the door:

“Father?” His lanky son stepped joyfully in. “Why, you look surprised! Surely you got my letter?” he said, after depositing bags and hampers in the hall.

“Your letter? No,” said Dr. Paull. Somehow, Ralph’s unexpected arrival was a slight shock to him. “I thought you were not coming back for a week yet,” he said, after they went into the dining-room.

“We were away more than the fortnight, father,” said the pale lad, with a smile as sad as his dead young mother’s had been when her morbid sensitiveness was wounded. “But—you don’t look well! You have been worried into going to some dinner-party or another” (with a glance at his father’s evening dress). “I must not go away again! They will do for you among them!”

“I’m not dead yet, you see,” said Hugh, feeling a new embarrassment.

Until now there had been a confidence between him and the delicate lad, who looked at him with his lost Lilia’s eyes, which was more like the mutual understanding between attached brothers than that of father with son. For the first time Dr. Paull felt reluctant to speak of his doings to Ralph.

“But you must want some supper,” he suggested. “I will call up one of the servants—”

Ralph protested that he was not in the least hungry, and that he had had some sandwiches at Derby Station, which was literally true, although on his way from the terminus he had thought pleasantly of the snug supper with his father, which he fully expected was in store for him. His reception had effectually satisfied his youthful appetite.

“By the way, Jones said something about letters in the library; just get them, will you? Perhaps yours may be among them. I have had an extra-busy day—was interrupted at breakfast—hadn’t time to open my letters,” said Hugh, uneasily.

Ralph hastened to execute his father’s command, and returned with a bundle of letters in his hand.

“Here is yours—unopened—as you see,” said Dr. Paull, showing Ralph his own letter, which he had neglected with the rest of his morning’s correspondence. “It was a fortunate thing I had not gone to bed.”

Ralph looked astonished. His father, the acmé of punctiliousness in business, speaking so carelessly of a whole batch of unopened letters! What could it mean?

“I have something to show you, father,” he said, gently. The poor boy thought that the fortnight’s loneliness had wrought this change in his beloved parent, whom he understood about as much as a beetle understands an eagle. And he fetched in two small packing-cases with lightly-fastened lids.

“There,” he said, “are they not beautiful? I made the ivy one myself.”

He opened the cases and removed some wadding. Dr. Paull stared with some perplexity at two wreaths—one of ivy, the other of white lilies. Then he bit his lip—he remembered! For the first time since Lilia’s death, he had not noted the approach of the anniversary of that terrible day when his son’s baby-hand had held him back from the one unforgivable sin—self-murder. On that day it had been his custom to take Lilia’s son to her grave, and talk to him of his mother: of what was best in her, that the memory of a mother should be even more to the boy than the influence of that mother, had she lived.

This time—he had forgotten!

“They are beautiful, Ralph,” he said, placing his hand affectionately on his boy’s shoulder. “Let us put them in a cool place, and go to bed. We must be up early to-morrow.”

He had not counted these last days as days of the month. He had made careless engagements for Tuesdays or Wednesdays, or other days in the week; and to-morrow he had appointments with important patients, and a consultation.

“It looks like decadence—strangely like decadence,” he told himself, bitterly, as, looking in the glass, he noted the deep lines on his face, the haggard look in his eyes. “I did not remember the twenty-first; and now I must cancel everything to-morrow—for the boy’s sake, I must be consistent—I must take him to his mother’s grave. But—to let everything go to the wall! Well, it must be done. But this shall be a lesson. No more fooling with princes and princesses—solid, sensible work.”

A brave determination, Dr. Paull! But, when you made it, did Fate smile, or shed a tear?