dance over your grave without a pang of remorse, or sentiment of
any kind, since they live, like midges, ONLY TO DANCE IN THE SUN, AND
SUCK SOME WORKER'S BLOOD."

"Oh, Christie! I'm so easily led. I am too great a fool to live. Kill
me!"

And she kneeled down, and renewed the request, looking up in his face
with an expression that might have disarmed Cain ipsum.

He smiled superior. "The question is, are you sorry you have been so
thoughtless?"

"Yes, dear. Oh! oh!"

"Will you be very good to make up?"

"Oh, yes. Only tell me how; for it does not come natural to poor me."

"Keep out of those women's way for the rest of the season."

"I will."

"Bring your stays home, and allow me to do what I like with them."

"Of course. Cut them in a million pieces."

"Till you are recovered, you must be my patient, and go nowhere without
me."

"That is no punishment, I am sure."

"Punishment! Am I the man to punish you? I only want to save you."

"Well, darling, it won't be the first time."

"No; but I do hope it will be the last."

CHAPTER XI.

"Sublata causa tollitur effectus." The stays being gone, and dissipation
moderated, Mrs. Staines bloomed again, and they gave one or two
unpretending little dinners at the Bijou. Dr. Staines admitted no false
friends to these. They never went beyond eight; five gentlemen, three
ladies. By this arrangement the terrible discursiveness of the fair, and
man's cruel disposition to work a subject threadbare, were controlled
and modified, and a happy balance of conversation established. Lady
Cicely Treherne was always invited, and always managed to come; for she
said, "They were the most agweeable little paaties in London, and the
host and hostess both so intewesting." In the autumn, Staines worked
double tides with the pen, and found a vehicle for medical narratives in
a weekly magazine that did not profess medicine.

This new vein put him in heart. His fees, towards the end of the year,
were less than last year, because there was no hundred-guinea fee; but
there was a marked increase in the small fees, and the unflagging pen
had actually earned him two hundred pounds, or nearly. So he was in good
spirits.

Not so Mrs. Staines; for some time she had been uneasy, fretful, and
like a person with a weight on her mind.

One Sunday she said to him, "Oh, dear, I do feel so dull. Nobody to go
to church with, nor yet to the Zoo."

"I'll go with you," said Staines.

"Yo