e thought of it.

Mrs. Gallilee's overflowing geniality instantly flooded the absent
doctor. He was rude, he was ugly; but what an inestimable friend! what
admirable advice! In Ovid's state of health he must not write letters;
his mother would write and thank the doctor, and ask for introductions
to local grandees who occupied a position in colonial society. She
seized the newspaper: a steamer for Canada sailed from Liverpool on
Saturday. Ovid could secure his cabin the next morning ("amidships, my
dear, if you can possibly get it"), and could leave London by Friday's
train. In her eagerness to facilitate his departure, she proposed to
superintend the shutting up of his house, in his absence, and to arrange
the disposal of the servants, if he considered it worth while to keep
them. She even thought of the cat. The easiest way to provide for
the creature would be of course to have her poisoned; but Ovid was so
eccentric in some things, that practical suggestions were thrown away on
him. "Sixpence a week for cat's meat isn't much," cried Mrs. Gallilee in
an outburst of generosity. "We will receive the cat!"

Ovid made his acknowledgments resignedly. Carmina could see that Mrs.
Gallilee's overpowering vitality was beginning to oppress her son.

"I needn't trouble you, mother," he said. "My domestic affairs were all
settled when I first felt the necessity of getting rest. My manservant
travels with me. My housemaid and kitchenmaid will go to their friends
in the country; the cook will look after the house; and her nephew, the
little page, is almost as fond of the cat as I am. If you will send for
a cab, I think I will go home. Like other people in my wretched state, I
feel fatigued towards night-time."

His lips just touched Carmina's delicate little ear, while his mother
turned away to ring the bell. "Expect me to-morrow," he whispered. "I
love you!--love you!--love you!" He seemed to find the perfection of
luxury in the reiteration of those words.

When Ovid had left them, Carmina expected to hear something of her
aunt's discovery in the Square.

Mrs. Gallilee's innocence was impenetrable. Not finding her niece in the
house, she had thought of the Square. What could be more natural than
that the cousins should take an evening walk, in one of the prettiest
enclosures in London? Her anticipation of Ovid's recovery, and her
admiration of Carmina's powers of persuasion appeared, for the time, to
be the only active ideas