Even Jack, who fell into the current notion of his generation of young men that the Henderson sort of morality was best adapted to quick success, evinced a consciousness of want of nobility in the course he was pursuing by not making Edith his confidante.  He would have said, of course, that she knew nothing about business, but what he meant was that she had a very clear conception of what was honest.  All the evidences of his prosperity, shown in his greater freedom of living, were sore trials to her.  She belonged to that old class of New-Yorkers who made trade honorable, like the merchants of Holland and Venice, and she knew also that Jack’s little fortune had come out of honest toil and strict business integrity.  Could there be any happiness in life in any other course?

It seemed cruel to put such a problem as this upon a young woman hardly yet out of girlhood, in the first flush of a new life, which she had dreamed should be so noble and high and so happy, in the period which is consecrated by the sweetest and loveliest visions and hopes that ever come into a woman’s life.

As the summer wore on to its maximum of heat and discomfort in the city, Edith, who never forgot to measure the hardships of others by her own more fortunate circumstances, urged Dr. Leigh to come away from her labors and rest a few days by the sea.  The reply was a refusal, but there was no complaint in the brief business-like note.  One might have supposed that it was the harvest-time of the doctor, if he had not known that she gathered nothing for herself.  There had never been so much sickness, she wrote, and such an opportunity for her.  She was learning a great deal, especially about some disputed contagious diseases.  She would like to see Mrs. Delancy, and she wouldn’t mind a breath of air that was more easily to be analyzed than that she existed in, but nothing could induce her to give up her cases.  All that appeared in her letter was her interest in her profession.

Father Damon, who had been persuaded by Edith’s urgency to go down with Jack for a few days to the Golden House, seemed uncommonly interested in the reasons of Dr. Leigh’s refusal to come.

“I never saw her,” he said, “so cheerful.  The more sickness there is, the more radiant she is.  I don’t mean,” he added, laughing, “in apparel.  Apparently she never thinks of herself, and positively she seems to take no time to eat or sleep.  I encounter her everywhere.  I doubt if she ever sits down, except when she drops in at the mission chapel now and then, and sits quite unmoved on a bench by the door during vespers.”

“Then she does go there?” said Edith.

“That is a queer thing.  She would promptly repudiate any religious interest.  But I tell her she is a bit of a humbug.  When I speak about her philanthropic zeal, she says her interest is purely scientific.”

“Anyway, I believe,” Jack put in, “that women doctors are less mercenary than men.  I dare say they will get over that when the novelty of coming into the profession has worn off.”