low it. Upon that she flew instantly into the opposite
extreme. "I am in my own room, and I am my own mistress," she said
angrily. "I insist on having my own way." Grosse was ready with his
answer.

"Take your own ways; fatigue those weak new eyes of yours--and to-morrow,
when you try to look out of window, you will not be able to see at all."
This reply terrified her into instant submission. She assisted in
replacing the bandage with her own hands. "May I go away to my own room?"
she asked, with the simplicity of a child. "I have seen such beautiful
sights--and I do so want to think of them by myself."

The medical adviser instantly granted the patient's request. Any
proceeding which tended to compose her, was a proceeding of which he
highly approved.

"If Oscar comes," she whispered, as she passed me on her way to the door,
"mind I hear of it! and mind you don't tell him of the mistakes I have
made!" She paused for a moment, thinking. "I don't understand myself,"
she said. "I never was so happy in my life. And yet I feel almost ready
to cry!" She turned towards Grosse. "Come here, papa. You have been very
good to me to-day. I will give you a kiss." She laid her hands lightly on
his shoulders; kissed his lined and wrinkled cheek; gave me a little
squeeze round the waist--and left us. Grosse turned sharply to the
window, and used his huge silk handkerchief for a purpose to which (I
suspect) it had not been put for many a long year past.

CHAPTER THE FORTIETH

Traces of Nugent

"MADAME PRATOLUNGO!"

"Herr Grosse?"

He put his handkerchief back into his pocket, and turned round to me from
the window with his face composed again, and his tea-caddy snuff-box in
his hand.

"Now you have seen for your own self," he said, with an emphatic rap on
the box, "do you dare tell that sweet girls which of them it is that has
gone his ways and left her for ever?"

It is not easy to find a limit to the obstinacy of women--when men expect
them to acknowledge themselves to have been wrong. After what I had seen,
I no more dared tell her than he did. I was only too obstinate to
acknowledge it to him--just yet.

"Mind this!" he went on. "Whether you shake her with frights, or whether
you heat her with rages, or whether you wound her with griefs--it all
goes straight the same to those weak new eyes of hers. They are so weak
and so new, that I must ask once more for my beds here to-night, for to
see to-morrow if I have not