your nursing-homes.
Probably the wall-papers will offend me, but at least I shall not have
the whole of a countryside discussing my helplessness and the various
stages of my illness. Ye gods! they would like to ask for details from
one's very footman at the hall door!'

It was useless to say more. The surgeon recommended diet, and made out
a prescription.

'Everything is talked about in these days, I admit,' he said, 'and I
think no one regrets the decline of reserve more than we doctors do;
but you are carrying a desire for concealment too far.'

Mrs. Ogilvie was drawing on her gloves and buttoning them with an air
much more grave and intent than she had bestowed upon her doctor during
the discussion of her health. 'Even an animal,' she said lightly, 'is
allowed to creep away into the denseness of a thicket and nurse its
wounds unseen; but we superior human beings are like the beggars who
expose a mutilated arm to the pitiful, and would fain show their wounds
to every passer-by.'

'Perhaps you will allow me to write to your son?' said the surgeon.

Mrs. Ogilvie replied by a quick and unequivocal answer in the negative;
then, relaxing a little, she said more lightly, but with intent, 'I
have always triumphed over difficulties all my life--I have always
overcome.'

'That is quite possible,' said the physician gravely.

Mrs. Ogilvie stood up and began to arrange her veil before the mirror
which hung above the mantel-piece; and, as she did so, she glanced
critically at her face under her large, fashionable-looking hat, with
its bizarre trimmings.

'I am very plain,' she said, with a sort of sensuous enjoyment in her
frankness, 'and yet I have passed successfully for a beautiful woman
most of my life. I am also what is ridiculously called a power in
society, and I owe everything to my own will. I detest unsuccess!'

'You are talking of the success which lies in the hands of every clever
woman,' said the doctor, 'but your health is another matter.'

'I believe in my good luck; it has never failed me,' said Mrs. Ogilvie,
as she shook hands and said good-bye.

When she reached home she dressed in one of her sumptuous gowns, for a
score of country neighbours were coming to meet Jane Erskine as the
fiancee of her son. Her maid bore the brunt of my lady's sarcasm
during the time of dressing, and was given a curt notice of dismissal
before the toilet was complete. The woman's big round eyes, which were
so obn