should have compared with Miss Grey," said
Killigrew decidedly. "I should say they were as different as it is
possible for two persons of the same sex to be. Hilaria was like a boy;
Miss Grey is most feminine."

"Yes, she is," said Ishmael eagerly; "but there's the same frankness,
that way of meeting you that other girls don't have."

"I know what you mean," agreed Carminow, "though I don't think one
notices it when one sees more of Miss Grey. As Killigrew says, she is so
essentially feminine--she is always gwateful for support in a way that
is really very sad in one who has to battle with the world. It is a hard
life for a refined gentlewoman, I fear."

"Dear old chap, with his 'battling with the world' and all the rest of
his really highly moral conventional views!" exclaimed Killigrew. "He's
a fraud, isn't he, Ishmael, who pretends to love to wallow in blug just
to hide his lamblike disposition."

"You always did talk wot," remarked Carminow placidly. "You're weally
not a bit changed, Killigrew, in spite of Paris. By the way, I suppose
you heard about Polkinghorne?"

"Yes, from Old Tring. I went to St. Renny a little while ago."

"Ah! then you heard about Hilaria? I thought from Ruan's mention of her
you had neither of you heard."

"Heard what?"

"Why," said Carminow in rather a shocked voice, "about her illness."

"No!..." exclaimed Ishmael and Killigrew in a breath; and Killigrew went
on: "What illness? I can't imagine the Hilaria we used to know ill."

"She's not the Hilaria we used to know, I'm afraid. You would hardly
recognize her. She's got a disease--you wouldn't know it if I were to
tell you its name--that is one of the most obscure known to science, if
you can call a thing known when no cure can be discovered to it. Yes,
she's hopelessly paralysed, is poor Hilaria." A certain impersonal note
as he spoke of the illness had crept through all the genuine feeling in
Carminow's voice.

"But it's impossible!" cried Ishmael, profoundly shocked, not so much at
any personal feeling for Hilaria, as an instinctive protest that such
things could be. "Hilaria--why she was never still, and the things she
did--why, you remember her walks and her fencing and everything--"

"Old Dr. Harvey at St. Renny puts it down very largely to those
excessive walks she used to take," said Carminow.

Ishmael said nothing; he was struck by a greater horror that it should
have been those walks, which had so seemed to set Hi