When therefore he came to
practise in Glaston, he brought his quota of yeast into the old
bottle of that ancient and slumberous town. But as he had to gain
for himself a practice, he was prudent enough to make no display of
the cherished emptiness of his swept and garnished rooms. I do not
mean to blame him. He did not fancy himself the holder of any
Mephistophelean commission for the general annihilation of belief
like George Bascombe, only one from nature's bureau of ways and
means for the cure of the ailing body--which, indeed, to him,
comprised all there was of humanity. He had a cold, hard,
business-like manner, which, however admirable on some grounds,
destroyed any hope Helen had cherished of finding in him one to whom
she might disclose her situation.
He proved himself both wise and skilful, yet it was weeks before
Leopold began to mend. By the time the fever left him, he was in
such a prostrate condition, that it was very doubtful whether yet he
could live, and Helen had had to draw largely even upon her fine
stock of health.
Her ministration continued most exhausting. Yet now she thought of
her life as she had never thought of it before, namely as a thing of
worth.
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