w his mother's level in replying to this. "Do
everything you can to make her life happy while I am away." Those were
his only instructions.

But Mrs. Gallilee had not done with him yet. "With regard to visitors,"
she went on, "I presume you wish me to be careful, if I find young men
calling here oftener than usual?"

Ovid actually laughed at this. "Do you think I doubt her?" he asked.
"The earth doesn't hold a truer girl than my little Carmina!" A thought
struck him while he said it. The brightness faded out of his face; his
voice lost its gaiety. "There is one person who may call on you," he
said, "whom I don't wish her to see."

"Who is he?"

"Unfortunately, he is a man who has excited her curiosity. I mean
Benjulia."

It was now Mrs. Gallilee's turn to be amused. Her laugh was not one of
her foremost fascinations. It was hard in tone, and limited in range--it
opened her mouth, but it failed to kindle any light in her eyes.
"Jealous of the ugly doctor!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Ovid, what next?"

"You never made a greater mistake in your life," her son answered
sharply.

"Then what is the objection to him?" Mrs. Gallilee rejoined.

It was not easy to meet that question with a plain reply. If Ovid
asserted that Benjulia's chemical experiments were assumed--for some
reason known only to himself--as a cloak to cover the atrocities of
the Savage Science, he would only raise the doctor in his mother's
estimation. If, on the other hand, he described what had passed between
them when they met in the Zoological Gardens, Mrs. Gallilee might summon
Benjulia to explain the slur which he had indirectly cast on the memory
of Carmina's mother--and might find, in the reply, some plausible reason
for objecting to her son's marriage. Having rashly placed himself in
this dilemma, Ovid unwisely escaped from it by the easiest way. "I don't
think Benjulia a fit person," he said, "to be in the company of a young
girl."

Mrs. Gallilee accepted this expression of opinion with a readiness,
which would have told a more suspicious man that he had made a mistake.
Ovid had roused the curiosity--perhaps awakened the distrust--of his
clever mother.

"You know best," Mrs. Gallilee replied; "I will bear in mind what you
say." She rang the bell for Carmina, and left the room. Ovid found the
minutes passing slowly, for the first time since the day had been
fixed for his departure. He attributed this impression to his natural
impatience for the