But they had by no means seen the last of him. If the Old Lady's theory
was correct, Cautley must have been the most grossly avaricious of young
men. The length of his visits was infamous, their frequency appalling. He
kept on coming long after Miss Quincey was officially and obviously well;
and on the most trivial, the most ridiculous pretexts. It was "just to
see how she was getting on," or "because he happened to be passing," or
"to bring that book he told her about." He had prescribed a course of
light literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary to
supply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines that
you cannot get made up at the chemist's, insight, understanding,
sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows if
these things were not the most expensive.

All the time Miss Quincey was trying to keep up with the new standard
imposed on the staff. Hitherto she had laboured under obvious
disadvantages; now, in her leisurely convalescence, sated as she was with
time, she wallowed openly and wantonly in General Culture. And it seemed
that the doctor had gone in for General Culture too. He could talk to her
for ever about Shakespeare, Tennyson and Browning. Miss Quincey was
always dipping into those poets now, always drawing water from the wells
of literature. By the way, she was head over heels in debt to _Sordello_,
and was working double time to pay him off. She reported her progress
with glee. It was "only a hundred and thirty-eight more pages, Dr.
Cautley. In forty-six days I shall have finished _Sordello_."

"Then you will have done what I never did in my whole life."

It amused Cautley to talk to Miss Quincey. She wore such an air of
adventure; she was so fresh and innocent in her excursions into the
realms of gold; and when she sat handling her little bits of Tennyson
and Browning as if they had been rare nuggets recently dug up there, what
could he do but feign astonishment and interest? He had travelled
extensively in the realms of gold. He was acquainted with all the poets
and intimate with most; he knew some of them so well as to be able to
make jokes at their expense. He was at home in their society. Beside his
light-hearted intimacy Miss Cursiter's academic manner showed like the
punctilious advances of an outsider. But he was terribly modern this
young man. He served strange gods, healers and regenerators whose names
had never penetrated to St. Si