CHAPTER XXXII.

ANGELS' VISITS.

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ERNESTINE'S unceremonious parture from the quaint confessional scene in which Coventry played the part of father confessor, meant that she was afraid of letting her feelings run away with her, and that she intended to distract her mind by work as quickly as possible.

It was a curious feature in her character, and known to scarcely anyone but herself, that this apparently cold woman was frequently driven to take such means to conquer the intensity of feeling which burned behind the calm exterior, and threatened to break it down.

She went straight from the Silburn's house to Miss Armine's lodgings. She found that lady sitting dolefully enough in the new rooms which Dorothy had found for her. The blinds were down, and the little parlour looked dim and gloomy.

"Will you excuse this dark room?" said Miss Armine, rising languidly from the corner of the sofa in which she had been curled up; 'my head aches so, I cannot bear the light."

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Ernestine found her way in the semi-darkness to the side of the

sofa.

"And I am all over chills, and I ache from head to foot; and I can't

eat anything, and I was doing a little picture on commission, and it isn't finished."

To this pathetic outcry Ernestine made an irrelevant answer.

"Come to the window; you must bear the light for a moment, as I want to see your tongue."

in

Miss Armine submitted silence. Ernestine only held the blind back a little.

"Coated with creamy fur-no wonder you can't eat. You must go to bed right off and leave pictures and commissions alone for the present."

In a quarter of an hour Miss Armine was in bed, to her own intense relief, in the character of a really sick person. She had held up her aching head and worried about her pictures just as long as was possible; and now, when the effort was becoming unbearable, the doctor had come and told her to lie down and give up the responsibilities of life. The release was as nearly pleasant as any sensation could be to her in her present state; and she laid her head upon the pillow in her darkened bedroom with a sigh of thankfulness.

'Don't spend too much of your time here, dear Dr. Ernestine," she said. "It is not worth your while."

"You must be well nursed," said Ernestine gently, as she gave

some finishing touches to her arrangements.

Miss Armine raised her head in horror, and started up on to her elbows in spite of her weariness.

"Nursed-oh no, indeed, I shall want no nursing, I can't pay a nurse; and indeed, dear Dr. Ernestine, I will be so good and take so much care of myself, I shall not want a nurse."

"Very well," said Ernestine, quietly, "you shall not have one if you don't wish it."

The promise pacified the girl, for she had little idea of how ill she really was, or what skilled nursing she would require.

Ernestine had little time to think of her own affairs after this.

She had Miss Armine's life in her hands, as she well knew, and she was determined to save it.

"Ernestine," said Dorothy, one day when she found her by Miss Armine's bedside; "it is not right for you to spend half your time here. You are not attending to your own interests."

"Typhoid," was Ernestine's somewhat oracular reply, "depends more than any known disease on good nursing. I think I am attending to my own interests in properly looking after a case like this. I dare not trust any but a very good nurse with her now; but I find it will be necessary for some one to stay with her while I am obliged to be away, as I sometimes am.'

"I will do that," said Dorothy; "I shall just enjoy it. I was born to be a nurse; I only want a little training, and this will just be an opportunity for me."

And so these two women (neither of whom, by the way, could rightly afford to do it) gave their time and their brains and their hearts to Miss Armine; watching her night and day, and nursing her through the fever and delirium.

Ernestine was indeed glad, so

far as was possible, to lose thought of her own life and troubles in Miss Armine's. Her struggles were harder, her future was more doubtful, than she let even Dorothy know. She was heavily handicapped at the beginning of her solitary career. She was a woman, to begin with a fact which, in England, places a worker at a great disadvantage. She was compelled by sheer lack of money to take obscure lodgings, instead of a house, in Wimpole-street; and her paying connection was so small that she began to feel her daily bread and butter a matter of great concern. Indeed she knew that, unless some fresh opening came for her before long, she would be in actual want.

One day she heard that a housesurgeon was wanted at the hospital where she had so long worked. She debated much whether to apply for the post, which would avert her immediate distress, as she would have rooms in the hospital and a small salary. It required some courage to go back among her old colleagues and brave all the gossip which her applying for such a post would cause. She put the idea aside for a day or two, and gave unremitting attention to her few patients. But they were so few, and her connection showed so little sign of increasing, that she could not let the opportunity slip altogether. So one day she left Dorothy to take charge of Miss Armine, whose course of fever had not yet run out, and walked to the hospital.

She was welcomed with great courtesy by her old friends. Dr. Vavasour Doldy was something more than Dr. Vavasour had been. She had entered the aristocracy of medicine, and was respected accordingly; and her proposal was evidently looked on with favour, though with some surprise, until she made it known that she would expect to

receive the same salary as the former house-surgeon had received.

"Ah!" said the secretary, coldly, "that makes a difference. We have one or two excellent candidates who are ready to fill the post unpaid, for the sake of the experience. Of course your name and position would have influenced us to give the preference to you; but we really cannot afford a salary."

Ernestine went back to Miss Armine's sick-room, and told her story to the sympathetic Dorothy, who carried it home to Coventry at dinner time, now almost the only hour in the day when she saw him. Indeed, that gentleman was left so much to his own devices now that Dorothy had turned nurse, that it was pretty nearly certain he must get into mischief before long. And the very next morning after Ernestine's call at the hospital, he set about it. Soon after Dorothy had gone out, he sallied forth himself, and walked straight into the city to Mr. Lingen's office.

Lewis Lingen was sitting alone in his dust-coloured room when a clerk brought in a card and handed it to him.

"The gentleman does not wish to come in unless you are quite disengaged; otherwise he will call again."

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"Coventry Silburn!-ah, I know," said Lingen, smiling to himself; 66 a verse-maker." Yes, show him in at once," he added aloud to the clerk.

When Coventry entered, Lingen looked up, eyeglass on eye, from his papers. He had never had to do with this verse-maker personally. After a second's scrutiny, while Coventry advanced, he rose to welcome him-dropping the eyeglass as he did so, and putting it inside his waistcoat. The man before him was pellucid-his soul shone out of his eyes instead of being concealed behind them. Lingen looked

the incarnation of bright friendliness, welcoming the poet who had strayed into his office, much as he might have greeted a wandering butterfly.

"I have come," said Coventry, "on a very impertinent errand. I don't want to be really impertinent; I have only one question to ask you, and you will betray no secrets in answering it."

"Sit down if you please," said Mr. Lingen, "I am not busy just now; and I have often desired to meet you, though I never anticipated seeing you here. You are about the last man in London whom I should expect to find in my office."

"You are right; I should not be likely to come here on my own affairs. I am putting my fingers into other people's pies, and I shall probably make a mess of it."

"Well! and how am I to help you in this cookery?"

"I have come to you," said Coventry, "because you know everybody's secrets, and can tell me what is possible and what is not. There are two splendid people whom both you and I know, whose lives are being made miserable. They have separated on a flimsy pretext, and are living apart and breaking their hearts over it. Now I for one don't believe in their pretext; I think there is a secret between them, which you probably know. So I want you to tell me whether there is anything to be done to bring these people together again."

?"

"And these people are"Dr. Doldy and Mrs. Dr. Doldy." "Oh!" said Mr. Lingen abstractedly, wearing the look which came upon him when he turned his vision inwards to review all the points of a case, "I heard there was some professional quarrel between them; you don't believe that?

"Yes, I do," answered Coventry"Indeed I know it is true. And it is just what might have been expected with two people of strong character, of differing views, and separated by half a generation in technical education. But they are not the people to actually break up a life which they had just formed together because of such a quarrel. Something besides that has come between them."

"And how can I know anything about it?"

"Because I think it relates to Miss Doldy's affairs."

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And, if I may ask another question, what should make you expect me to help you if I do know anything?

Only the shape of your head," answered Coventry. "I am sure you will do what you can to avert misfortune from two such people as these are."

"I don't know Mrs. Doldy," said Mr. Lingen, "I have heard that she is a handsome woman."

"She is a glorious woman," exclaimed Coventry, "a woman whose greatest personal charm is that, though of course she knows she is handsome, she does not think about it, for she has other things in her mind.”

"I should like to see her," said Mr. Lingen; "like most intensely practical men, I delight in fast horses and fine women."

"But you are not naturally intensely practical: you have turned the powers of a mind created to deal with abstractions, upon facts.

But as to Dr. Ernestine, you will not meet her in society now; you will have to enter Bohemia and come to my house if you are to see her. But even that I can't promise you at present she is very busy."

"And think it is Miss you Doldy who has come between these two "

"Not knowingly, I fancy: it appears to me as if Dr. Ernestine had, by some accident, come to know more of Miss Doldy's affairs than she liked, and whatever has come between her and Dr. Doldy, has come, I feel sure, by silence and the keeping of secrets."

"Yes; that is possible. But I can do nothing until Miss Doldy is married. When she is Lady Flaxen, and Mr. Yriarte is a convict, I think I may help you."

"Does he really deserve such a punishment?" asked Coventry, thinking of Ernestine's distress when she spoke of it.

"Certainly," exclaimed Mr. Lingen with unusual heat of manner; "for the matter of that, he ought to be hung. But at present," he added more coolly, "my lips are sealed. When those two events have taken place of which I spoke, I believe I can help you to bring the doctors together again. But you musn't forget your promise to introduce me to the lady."

They talked for a while about other things literature principally. And then Coventry went home, and told Mrs. Silburn in enigmatical fashion that "he had been to make a call, and had seen a man of imagination who had wasted himself upon facts."

"And who is this wonderful man?" asked Dorothy. "Lewis Lingen."

"Now," exclaimed Dorothy, "you have done something useful for once in your life. You have reminded me, by mentioning that man's name, of how it is that poor little Ruth Armine hasn't got any money. She gets her dividends from him and, like the clever, practical people we are, we never left her new address at the old lodgings. And, of course, being ill, she has not been at the Art School or any of her haunts. I

expect he has lost her: I will write him a note at once."

Which she did; and, in the delight of her discovery, forgot to question Coventry any further about his interview with the great lawyer.

As it happened, Dorothy's note was very welcome to Mr. Lingen; for it arrived just as

Ruth's brother-in-law, fresh out of the train from the north, had entered his office to demand of him what he meant by such nonsense as telegraphing to him that his sister had disappeared?

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A PRACTICAL MAN. RUTH ARMINE's brother-in-law was a man who generally met with respect. He was eminently respectable in appearance, always cool, well dressed, well brushed, quiet in manner; yet in disposition he was a species of incarnate whirlwind. The moment Mr. Lingen met his quick restless eyes, he was aware of the fact that he had encountered one of those men who seem created to fill something of the office of a human tornado. Such men cannot live unless they both move themselves and stir the world around them. If they are not born into a position where they are utilised as conquerors, soldiers, or politicians, they enter the easier arena of finance, and become gigantic speculators, and make of themselves a sort of centre to a perpetual stir and change of money.

Mr. Nugent was supposed to be a cotton-spinner. His real affairs in life were only understood by a few men like himself well known in the great money exchanges of Europe.

He had come to London now, not on business, but to see what had become of his little sister-inlaw. She had worried him for some years by persistently refusing

to give up her independence and add herself to the wife and nine daughters, who made a comparatively colourless party round his dinner table, and now she had put the cap to her absurdities by losing herself in some extraordinary fashion; and when Mr. Lingen, who was very busy, looked up from his papers and met the quick eyes of his visitor, he felt very glad that Dorothy's note had just come, and that he could perhaps divert the fury of the whirlwind by supplying some news of the lost relation.

Mr. Nugent had a peculiarity which was quite a part of himself. He always understood-or supposed he understood-what people had to say before they had half said it. He never heard a sentence to the end.

"Ruth ill?"-just what might be expected delirious? - brain fever, of course. The foolish girl will work. Women can't stand it -all nonsense to suppose they can. They weren't created for it, and its no good trying to make them over again. Just give me her address

thanks," jotting it down in his notebook while he spoke. "I must be off directly, as I've only got about an hour to look her up in.-Oh, by the way, I expect I shall have to send for a physician for the child. She is sure to have called in some little local nobody. Whom should you recommend? My friend Dr. Bull is out of town to-day, I know."