The tender look and tone, the yearning of the daughter’s heart for the mother she had never seen, save only with the unfixed, undistinguishing eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps the under-thought that she might soon rejoin her in another state of being,—­all came upon her with a sudden overflow of feeling which broke through all the barriers between her heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept.  It seemed to her father as if the malign influence—­evil spirit it might almost be called—­which had pervaded her being, had at last been driven forth or exorcised, and that these tears were at once the sign and the pledge of her redeemed nature.  But now she was to be soothed, and not excited.  After her tears she slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as never before.

Old Sophy met the Doctor at the door and told him all the circumstances connected with the extraordinary attack from which Elsie had suffered.  It was the purple leaves, she said.  She remembered that Dick once brought home a branch of a tree with some of the same leaves on it, and Elsie screamed and almost fainted then.  She, Sophy, had asked her, after she had got quiet, what it was in the leaves that made her feel so bad.  Elsie could n’t tell her,—­did n’t like to speak about it,—­shuddered whenever Sophy mentioned it.

This did not sound so strangely to the old Doctor as it does to some who listen to his narrative.  He had known some curious examples of antipathies, and remembered reading of others still more singular.  He had known those who could not bear the presence of a cat, and recollected the story, often told, of a person’s hiding one in a chest when one of these sensitive individuals came into the room, so as not to disturb him; but he presently began to sweat and turn pale, and cried out that there must be a cat hid somewhere.  He knew people who were poisoned by strawberries, by honey, by different meats, many who could not endure cheese,—­some who could not bear the smell of roses.  If he had known all the stories in the old books, he would have found that some have swooned and become as dead men at the smell of a rose,—­that a stout soldier has been known to turn and run at the sight or smell of rue,—­that cassia and even olive-oil have produced deadly faintings in certain. individuals,—­in short, that almost everything has seemed to be a poison to somebody.

“Bring me that basket, Sophy,” said the old Doctor, “if you can find it.”

Sophy brought it to him,—­for he had not yet entered Elsie’s apartment.

“These purple leaves are from the white ash,” he said.  “You don’t know the notion that people commonly have about that tree, Sophy?”

“I know they say the Ugly Things never go where the white ash grows,” Sophy answered.  “Oh, Doctor dear, what I’m thinkin’ of a’n’t true, is it?”

The Doctor smiled sadly, but did not answer.  He went directly to Elsie’s room.  Nobody would have known by his manner that he saw any special change in his patient.  He spoke with her as usual, made some slight alteration in his prescriptions, and left the room with a kind, cheerful look.  He met her father on the stairs.