He received her coldly and curtly.  There was a hurry and abstraction in his manner utterly unlike his former leisurely sympathy.  Many causes contributed to this effect; he was still all bruised and bleeding from the blow dealt to him by Rhoda’s strong young arm; an epidemic had kept him on his legs all day and a great part of the night; his time had never been so valuable, and he had been obliged to waste ten minutes of it contemplating the furniture in that detestable drawing-room.  He was worried and overworked, and Miss Quincey thought he was still offended; his very appearance made her argue the worst.  No hope to-day of clearing up that terrible misunderstanding.

She tremulously obeyed his first brief order, one by one undoing the buttons of her dress, laying bare her poor chest, all flat and formless as a child’s.  A momentary gentleness came over him as he adjusted the tubes of his stethoscope and began the sounding, backwards and forwards from heart to lungs, and from lungs to heart again; while the Old Lady looked on as merry as Destiny, and nodded her head and smiled, as much to say, “Tchee-tchee, what a farce it is!”

He put up the stethoscope with a click.

“There is nothing the matter with you.”

Mrs. Moon gave out a subdued ironical chuckle.

Miss Quincey looked anxiously into his face.  “Do you not think the heart—­the heart is a little—?”

He smiled and at the same time he sighed.  “Heart’s all right.  But you’ve left off your tonic.”

She had, she was afraid that so much poison—­

“Poison?” (He was not in the least offended.) “Do you mean the arsenic?  There are some poisons you can’t live without; but you must take them in moderation.”

“Will you—­will you want to see me again?”

“It will not be necessary.”

At that Mrs. Moon’s chuckle broke all bounds and burst into a triumphant “Tchee-tchee-chee!” He went away under cover of it.  It was her way of putting a pleasant face on the matter.

She hardly waited till his back was turned before she delivered herself of that which was working within her.

“I tell you what it is, Juliana; you’re a silly woman.”

Miss Quincey looked up with a faint premonitory fear.  Her fingers began nervously buttoning and unbuttoning her dress bodice; while half-dressed and shivering she waited the attack.

“And a pretty exhibition you’ve made of yourself this day.  Anybody might have thought you wanted to let that young man see what was the matter with you.”

“So I did.  He says there is nothing the matter with me.”

“Nothing the matter with you, indeed! He knows well enough what’s the matter with you.”

The victim was staring now, with terror in her tired eyes.  Her mouth dropped open with the question her tongue refused to utter.

“If you,” continued Mrs. Moon, “had wanted to tell him plainly that you were in love with him, you couldn’t have set about it better.  I should have thought you’d have been ashamed to look him in the face—­at your age.  You’re a disgrace to my family!”