Then he left her; and next day she went sadly home, and for many a long day the hollow world saw nothing of Cicely Treherne.

When Mr. Lusignan came home that night, Dr. Philip told him the miserable story, and his fears.  He received it, not as Philip had expected.  The bachelor had counted without his dormant paternity.  He was terror-stricken—­abject—­fell into a chair, and wrung his hands, and wept piteously.  To keep it from his daughter till she should be stronger, seemed to him chimerical, impossible.  However, Philip insisted it must be done; and he must make some excuse for keeping out of her way, or his manner would rouse her suspicions.  He consented readily to that, and indeed left all to Dr. Philip.

Dr. Philip trusted nobody; not even his own confidential servant.  He allowed no journal to come into the house without passing through his hands, and he read them all before he would let any other soul in the house see them.  He asked Rosa to let him be her secretary and open her letters, giving as a pretext that it would be as well she should have no small worries or trouble just now.

“Why,” said she, “I was never so well able to bear them.  It must be a great thing to put me out now.  I am so happy, and live in the future.  Well, dear uncle, you can if you like—­what does it matter?—­only there must be one exception:  my own Christie’s letters, you know.”

“Of course,” said he, wincing inwardly.

The very next day came a letter of condolence from Miss Lucas.  Dr. Philip intercepted it, and locked it up, to be shown her at a more fitting time.

But how could he hope to keep so public a thing as this from entering the house in one of a hundred newspapers?

He went into Gravesend, and searched all the newspapers, to see what he had to contend with.  To his horror, he found it in several dailies and weeklies, and in two illustrated papers.  He sat aghast at the difficulty and the danger.

The best thing he could think of was to buy them all, and cut out the account.  He did so, and brought all the papers, thus mutilated, into the house, and sent them into the kitchen.  He said to his old servant, “These may amuse Mr. Lusignan’s people, and I have extracted all that interests me.”

By these means he hoped that none of the servants would go and buy more of these same papers elsewhere.

Notwithstanding these precautions, he took the nurse apart, and said, “Now, you are an experienced woman, and to be trusted about an excitable patient.  Mind, I object to any female servant entering Mrs. Staines’s room with gossip.  Keep them outside the door for the present, please.  Oh, and nurse, if anything should happen, likely to grieve or to worry her, it must be kept from her entirely:  can I trust you?”

“You may, sir.”

“I shall add ten guineas to your fee, if she gets through the month without a shock or disturbance of any kind.”