He said to himself that he had had no choice, but then neither had the lady, and the thing might be hateful to her.  She might be in love, and then how she must abominate the business, and detest him!  It was horrible to think of her knowing it.  But for knowing it, she would never be a whit the worse, for he never had a day’s illness in his life and knew of no taint in his family.

When she saw him approach her bedside, a look reminding him of the ripple of a sudden cold gust passing with the shadow of a cloud over still water swept across her face.  She closed her eyes, and turned a little from him.  What color she had, came and went painfully.  Cursing in his heart the faithlessness of Mrs. Puckridge, he assumed his coldest, hardest professional manner, felt her pulse with the gentlest, yet most peremptory inquiry, gave her attendant some authoritative directions, and left her, saying he would call again in the afternoon.

During seven days he visited her twice a day.  He had good cause to be anxious, and her recovery was very slow.  Once and again appeared threatenings of the primary complaint, while from the tardiness with which her veins refilled, he feared for her lungs.  During all these visits, hardly a word beyond the most necessary passed between them.  After that time they were reduced to one a day.  Ever as the lady grew stronger, she seemed to become colder, and her manner grew more distant.  After a fortnight, he again reduced them to one in two days—­very unwillingly, for by that time she had come to occupy nearly as much of his thoughts as all the rest of his patients together.  She made him feel that his visits were less than welcome to her, except for the help they brought her, allowed him no insight into her character and ways of thinking, behaved to him indeed with such restraint, that he could recall no expression of her face the memory of which drew him to dwell upon it; yet her face and form possessed him with their mere perfection.  He had to set himself sometimes to get rid of what seemed all but her very presence, for it threatened to unfit him for the right discharge of his duties.  He was haunted with the form to which he had given a renewal of life, as a murderer is haunted with the form of the man he has killed.  In those marvelous intervals betwixt sleep and waking, when the soul is like a camera obscura, into which throng shapes unbidden, hers had displaced all others, and came constantly—­now flashing with feverous radiance, now pale and bloodless as death itself.  But ever and always her countenance wore a look of aversion.  She seemed in these visions, to regard him as a vile necromancer, who first cast her into the sepulcher, and then brought her back by some hellish art.  She had fascinated him.  But he would not allow that he was in love with her.  A man may be fascinated and hate.  A man is not necessarily in love with the woman whose form haunts him.  So said Faber to himself; and