can fathom it, implies intense depression. After all, we
must say he met much coldness here. The people did not visit him,
there was no courtesy, no kindliness shown him; and though he seemed
indifferent to it, who knows how he may have felt it?"

"I do not suspect he gave any encouragement to intimacy; beseemed to me
as if declining acquaintance with the neighborhood."

"Ay, but it was in resentment, I opine; but _you_ ought to know best.
You were constantly here?"

"Yes, very frequently; but I am not an observant person; all the little
details which convey a whole narrative to others are utterly lost upon
_me_."

The doctor smiled. It was an expression that appeared to say he
concurred in the curate's version of his own nature.

"It is these small gifts of combining, arranging, sifting, and testing,
that we doctors have to cultivate," said he, as he took his hat. "The
patient the most eager to be exact and truthful will, in spite of
himself, mislead and misguide us. There is a strange bend sinister in
human nature, against sincerity, that will indulge itself even at the
cost of life itself. You are the physician of the soul, sir; but take
my word for it, you might get many a shrewd hint and many a useful
suggestion from us, the meaner workmen who only deal with nerves and
arteries."

As he wended his solitary road homewards, L'Estrange pondered
thoughtfully over the doctor's words. He had no need, he well knew, to
be reminded of his ignorance of mankind; but here was a new view of it,
and it seemed immeasurable.

On the whole he was a sadder man than usual on that day. The world
around him--that narrow circle whose diameter was perhaps a dozen miles
or so--was very sombre in its coloring. He had left sickness and sorrow
in a house where he had hitherto only seen festivity and pleasure; and
worse again, as regarded himself, he had carried away none of those
kindlier sympathies and friendly feelings which were wont to greet him
at the great house. Were they really then changed to him? and if so, why
so? There is a moral chill in the sense of estrangement from those
we have lived with on terms of friendship that, like the shudder that
precedes ague, seems to threaten that worse will follow. Julia would see
where the mischief lay had she been in his place. Julia would have read
the mystery, if there were a mystery, from end to end; but _he_, he
felt it,--he had no powers of observation, no quickness, no tact. He