u must not believe all
she says, Dr. Brunton."

"You want to see my house?" he said. "Why do you want to see it?"

"Why do you _not_ want to see ours?" said Lady Louisa.

"I do want to see it."

"Well, I want to see yours for the same reason you want to see
ours--curiosity. I like to poke my nose in wherever I can get it."

"This, then, is our chief apartment."

"You live, move and have your being here?"

"Yes, my in-doors being: my sister will show you the rest."

"Oh, we don't want to see any more. We only show our own public rooms,
and not all of them: we generally keep one for a refuge."

Miss Brunton appeared, and the ladies prolonged their call a few
minutes: in leaving they invited her to the castle. Miss Brunton and her
brother went with them to the gate, and when they came in again and were
standing in the nutshell room, Miss Brunton said, "James, one feels as
if there had been a bright light here, and it had gone suddenly out."

"There has been a bright light here, and it has gone suddenly out," he
said.

In a few days there came an invitation to Dr. and Miss Brunton from the
earl to dine at the castle.

The earl fastened on Dr. Brunton as a leech or mosquito fastens on fresh
blood: this was an entirely new listener, and he felt free to tell his
very oldest stories without a lurking suspicion that he had told them
before. And Dr. Brunton enjoyed the evening, even though Lady Louisa did
not bring her charms specially to bear upon him. The earl had mixed much
in the world and seen a great deal of life; and a man who has done so
must be stupid indeed if he can't say something that shall be both
interesting and profitable. As man to man the doctor felt every inch the
earl's equal, and more, for he discovered that the earl was commonplace
in intellect, and informed only in one or two beats; nor did it require
strained attention to take in the meaning of his lordship's talk, so
that Dr. Brunton could listen and at the same time think of the many
instances--which only of late had stuck to his memory--of ladies of rank
who had married professional men; indeed, it seemed, now that his
thoughts were occupied with the subject, that he never opened a book of
gossip or memoirs but he came on some such instance in it. Why should
this not be his case? Why, indeed?

It has been said that the founder of civil society was the man who first
staked off a piece of ground, said it was his, and got fools to believe
h