feelings in the world, but
your desire for knowledge is the ferment under them just now, perhaps
more than you know."

Lurida's pale cheeks flushed and whitened more than once while her
friend was speaking. She loved her too sincerely and respected her
intelligence too much to take offence at her advice, but she could not
give up her humane and sisterly intentions merely from the fear of some
awkward consequences to herself. She had persuaded herself that she was
playing the part of a Protestant sister of charity, and that the fact
of her not wearing the costume of these ministering angels made no
difference in her relations to those who needed her aid.

"I cannot see your objections in the light in which they appear to
you," she said gravely. "It seems to me that I give up everything when I
hesitate to help a fellow-creature because I am a woman. I am not afraid
to send this letter and take all the consequences."

"Will you go with me to the doctor's, and let him read it in our
presence? And will you agree to abide by his opinion, if it coincides
with mine?"

Lurida winced a little at this proposal. "I don't quite like," she said,
"showing this letter to--to" she hesitated, but it had to come out--"to
a man, that is, to another man than the one for whom it was intended."

The neuter gender business had got a pretty damaging side-hit.

"Well, never mind about letting him read the letter. Will you go over to
his house with me at noon, when he comes back after his morning
visits, and have a talk over the whole matter with him? You know I have
sometimes had to say must to you, Lurida, and now I say you must go to
the doctor's with me and carry that letter."

There was no resisting the potent monosyllable as the sweet but firm
voice delivered it. At noon the two maidens rang at the doctor's door.
The servant said he had been at the house after his morning visits, but
found a hasty summons to Mr. Kirkwood, who had been taken suddenly
ill and wished to see him at once. Was the illness dangerous? The
servant-maid did n't know, but thought it was pretty bad, for Mr. Paul
came in as white as a sheet, and talked all sorts of languages which she
couldn't understand, and took on as if he thought Mr. Kirkwood was going
to die right off.

And so the hazardous question about sending the letter was disposed of,
at least for the present.

XVII. Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT.

The physician found Maurice just regaining his heat