“What is the matter with you this evening?  Good heavens, how pale and melancholy you look!” The lamplight fell full on his face.  “Look here, I have just made such a smart little man out of wax. . .”

She hoped to amuse the friend who was always so kind to her with this comical work of art; but, as she leaned forward to reach it, she caught sight of her uncle and exclaimed:  “Philippus comes here to cure me, but he looks as if he wanted a draught himself.  Take care, or you will have to drink that bitter brown stuff you sent yesterday; then you will know for once how nasty it can be.”  Though the child’s exclamation was well-meant, neither of the men took any notice of it.  They stood face to face in utter silence and with only a formal greeting; for Orion, without Mary’s remark, had been struck by the change that had come over the physician since yesterday.  Ignoring Orion’s presence, he asked the child a few brief questions, begged Eudoxia to persevere in the same course of treatment, and then hastily bid a general farewell to all present; Orion, however, did not respond, but said, with an affectionate glance at the little patient:  “One word with you presently.”

This made Philippus turn to look at Mary and, as the eyes of the rivals met, they knew that on one subject at any rate they thought and felt alike.  The leech already knew how tenderly the young man had taken to Mary, and he followed him into the room which Orion now occupied, and which, as Philippus was aware, had formerly been Paula’s.

“In the cause of duty,” he said to himself again and again, to keep himself calm and enable him to gather at least the general sense of what the handsome young fellow opposite to him was saying in his rich, pleasant voice, and urging as a request with more warmth than the leech had given him credit for.  Philippus, of course, had heard of the grandmother’s lamentable revulsion of feeling against her grandchild, and he thought Orion’s wish to remove the little girl fully justified.  But, on learning that she was to be placed under Paula’s care, he seemed startled, and gazed at the floor in such sullen gloom that the other easily guessed what was going on in his mind.  In fact, the physician suspected that the child was to serve merely as an excuse for the more frequent meetings of the lovers.  Unable to bury this apprehension in his own breast he started to his feet, and was about to put it into words, when Orion took the words out of his mouth, saying modestly but frankly, with downcast eyes: 

“I speak only for the child’s—­for Mary’s sake.  By my father’s soul. . . .”

But Philippus shook his head dismally, went up to his rival, and murmured dully: 

“For the sake of that child I am capable of doing or enduring a great deal.  She could not be better cared for than with Rufinus and Paula; but if I could suppose,” and he raised his voice, while his eyes took a sinister and threatening expression, “if I could suppose that her sacred and suffering innocence were merely an excuse. . . .”