What was she doing at a concert, when she ought to have been on her way
to her aunt's house? Why, if she must faint when the hot room had not
overpowered anyone else, had she failed to recover in the usual way?
There she lay on the sofa, alternately flushing and turning pale when
she was spoken to; ill at ease in the most comfortable house in London;
timid and confused under the care of her best friends. Making all
allowance for a sensitive temperament, could a long journey from Italy,
and a childish fright at seeing a dog run over, account for such a state
of things as this?

Annoyed and perplexed--but yet far too prudent to commit herself
ignorantly to inquiries which might lead to future embarrassment--Mrs.
Gallilee tried suggestive small talk as a means of enlightenment. The
wrinkled duenna, sitting miserably on satin supported by frail gilt
legs, seemed to take her tone of feeling from her young mistress,
exactly as she took her orders. Mrs. Gallilee spoke to her in English,
and spoke to her in Italian--and could make nothing of the experiment in
either case. The wild old creature seemed to be afraid to look at her.

Ovid himself proved to be just as difficult to fathom, in another way

He certainly answered when his mother spoke to him, but always briefly,
and in the same absent tone. He asked no questions, and offered no
explanations. The sense of embarrassment, on his side, had produced
unaccountable changes. He showed the needful attention to Carmina,
with a silent gentleness which presented him in a new character. His
customary manner with ailing persons, women as well as men, was rather
abrupt: his quick perception hurried him into taking the words out of
their mouths (too pleasantly to give offence) when they were describing
their symptoms. There he sat now, contemplating his pale little cousin,
with a patient attention wonderful to see; listening to the commonplace
words which dropped at intervals from her lips, as if--in his state of
health, and with the doubtful prospect which it implied--there were no
serious interests to occupy his mind.

Mrs. Gallilee could endure it no longer.

If she had not deliberately starved her imagination, and emptied her
heart of any tenderness of feeling which it might once have possessed,
her son's odd behaviour would have interested instead of perplexing her.
As it was, her scientific education left her as completely in the dark,
where questions of sentiment were concer