While this was passing through my mind the man had glanced through my letter and thrown it upon the table with an exclamation of disgust.  “Bah! he has had the effrontery,” he said petulantly, “to send me what he calls a new mode of treatment and it is in every essential that of Broadbent, well known for more than a quarter of a century.  New indeed!  I shall never find a doctor who has any scientific acumen.  I may as well abandon the search now.  Mon Dieu! and they call medicine a science!  Bah!” and with a frown he dropped his head despondently upon his hand.  The young girl passed her hand gently, soothingly, over his forehead and did not speak for nearly a minute.

“You are not feeling well to-night, father,” she said at length.  “M.  Godin has been here during my absence.”

“M.  Godin!” I exclaimed half aloud, catching at the stovepipe lest I should fall from the stove.  “So our rival is hot upon the scent, —­probably even ahead of us.  How on earth—­” But I did not finish the exclamation.  My seizure of the pipe upon my side of the partition had produced an audible vibration of that portion extending over the heads of my neighbours.  The young girl’s quick ear had detected the sound and she had ceased speaking and fastened her eyes suspiciously upon the aperture through which I was gazing.  It seemed to me as if she must see me, yet I dared not move.  After a little she seemed reassured and continued:  “I knew he had been here.  You are always this way after his visits.  Why, of late, does he always come when I am away?” The question seemed innocent enough, yet the man to whom it was addressed turned crimson and then as pale as ashes.  When he spoke the effort his self-control cost him was terribly apparent.

“We have private business, dear,” he said, “private business.”  He hesitated a moment and again his eyes wore the wild look I had first noticed.  “I am selling him something,” he continued, “very dear to me—­as dear as my heart’s blood, and I expect to get enough for it to guard you from want.”

“And you, father?” the young girl questioned fervently.  I thought I noticed a tremor run through his frame, as drawing her face down to his, he said, kissing her, “Me?  Never mind me, Puss; this cancer here will take care of me.”

She made no reply, but turned away to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes.  As she did so she raised her face toward me.  I have never been considered particularly sympathetic,—­that is, no more than the average,—­but there was something in the expression of her face that went to my heart like a knife.  I felt as if I were about to sob with her.  I do not know what it was that so aroused my sympathies.  We are, I fancy, more apt to feel for those whose beauty is like to the ideals we have learned to love, than we are to be moved by the suffering of those whose looks repel us,—­and this may have had something to do with my condition,—­for the young girl was radiantly beautiful,—­yet it could hardly have been the real cause of it.