have prescribed will a little aid and accelerate that
which Nature has yet to do, and in a day or two I do not doubt that your
daughter will be perfectly restored. Only let me recommend care to avoid
exposure to the open air during the close of the day. Let her avoid also
the room in which she was first seized, for it is a strange phenomenon
in nervous temperaments that a nervous attack may, without visible
cause, be repeated in the same place where it was first experienced. You
had better shut up the chamber for at least some weeks, burn fires in
it, repaint and paper it, sprinkle chloroform. You are not, perhaps,
aware that Dr. Lloyd died in that room after a prolonged illness. Suffer
me to wait till your servant returns with the medicine, and let me
employ the interval in asking you a few questions. Miss Ashleigh, you
say, never had a fainting fit before. I should presume that she is not
what we call strong. But has she ever had any illness that alarmed you?"

"Never."

"No great liability to cold and cough, to attacks of the chest or
lungs?"

"Certainly not. Still I have feared that she may have a tendency to
consumption. Do you think so? Your questions alarm me!"

"I do not think so; but before I pronounce a positive opinion, one
question more. You say you have feared a tendency to consumption. Is
that disease in her family? She certainly did not inherit it from you.
But on her father's side?"

"Her father," said Mrs. Ashleigh, with tears in her eyes, "died young,
but of brain fever, which the medical men said was brought on by over
study."

"Enough, my dear madam. What you say confirms my belief that your
daughter's constitution is the very opposite to that in which the seeds
of consumption lurk. It is rather that far nobler constitution,
which the keenness of the nervous susceptibility renders delicate but
elastic,--as quick to recover as it is to suffer."

"Thank you, thank you, Dr. Fenwick, for what you say. You take a load
from my heart; for Mr. Vigors, I know, thinks Lilian consumptive, and
Mrs. Poyntz has rather frightened me at times by hints to the same
effect. But when you speak of nervous susceptibility, I do not quite
understand you. My daughter is not what is commonly called nervous. Her
temper is singularly even."

"But if not excitable, should you also say that she is not
impressionable? The things which do not disturb her temper may, perhaps,
deject her spirits. Do I make myself understood