After a brief interview with his step-son, Mr. Gallilee returned to his daughters in Scotland.

Touched by his fatherly interest in Carmina, Ovid engaged to keep him informed of her progress towards recovery. If the anticipation of saving her proved to be the sad delusion of love and hope, silence would signify what no words could say.

In ten days’ time, there was a happy end to suspense. The slow process of recovery might extend perhaps to the end of the year. But, if no accident happened, Ovid had the best reasons for believing that Carmina’s life was safe.

Freed from the terrible anxieties that had oppressed him, he was able to write again, a few days later, in a cheerful tone, and to occupy his pen at Mr. Gallilee’s express request, with such an apparently trifling subject as the conduct of Mr. Null.

“Your old medical adviser was quite right in informing you that I had relieved him from any further attendance on Carmina. But his lively imagination (or perhaps I ought to say, his sense of his own consequence) has misled you when he also declares that I purposely insulted him. I took the greatest pains not to wound his self-esteem. He left me in anger, nevertheless.

“A day or two afterwards, I received a note from him; addressing me as ‘Sir,’ and asking ironically if I had any objection to his looking at the copies of my prescriptions in the chemist’s book. Though he was old enough to be my father (he remarked) it seemed that experience counted for nothing; he had still something to learn from his junior, in the treatment of disease — and so on.

“At that miserable time of doubt and anxiety, I could only send a verbal reply, leaving him to do what he liked. Before I tell you of the use that he made of his liberty of action, I must confess something relating to the prescriptions themselves. Don’t be afraid of long and learned words, and don’t suppose that I am occupying your attention in this way, without a serious reason for it which you will presently understand.

“A note in the manuscript — to my study of which, I owe, under God, the preservation of Carmina’s life — warned me that chemists, in the writer’s country, had either refused to make up certain prescriptions given in the work, or had taken the liberty of altering the new quantities and combinations of some of the drugs prescribed.

“Precisely the same thing happened here, in the case of the first chemist to whom I sent. He refused to make up the medicine, unless I provided him with a signed statement taking the whole responsibility on myself.

“Having ascertained the exact nature of his objection, I dismissed him without his guarantee, and employed another chemist; taking care (in the interests of my time and my temper) to write my more important prescriptions under reserve. That is to say, I followed the conventional rules, as to quantities and combinations, and made the necessary additions or changes from my own private stores when the medicine was sent home.

“Poor foolish Mr. Null, finding nothing to astonish him in my course of medicine — as represented by the chemist — appears by his own confession, to have copied the prescriptions with a malicious object in view. ‘I have sent them, (he informs me, in a second letter) to Doctor Benjulia; in order that he too may learn something in his profession from the master who has dispensed with our services.’ This new effort of irony means that I stand self-condemned of vanity, in presuming to rely on my own commonplace resources — represented by the deceitful evidence of the chemist’s book!

“But I am grateful to Mr. Null, notwithstanding: he has done me a service, in meaning to do me an injury.

“My imperfect prescriptions have quieted the mind of the man to whom he sent them. This wretch’s distrust has long since falsely suspected me of some professional rivalry pursued in secret; the feeling showed itself again, when I met with him by accident on the night of my return to London. Since Mr. Null has communicated with him, the landlady is no longer insulted by his visits, and offended by his questions — all relating to the course of treatment which I was pursuing upstairs.

“You now understand why I have ventured to trouble you on a purely professional topic. To turn to matters of more interest — our dear Carmina is well enough to remember you, and to send her love to you and the girls. But even this little effort is followed by fatigue.

“I don’t mean only fatigue of body: that is now a question of time and care. I mean fatigue of mind — expressing itself by defect of memory.

“On the morning when the first positive change for the better appeared, I was at her bedside when she woke. She looked at me in amazement. ‘Why didn’t you warn m............