of Alick's illness, by which they
were put in quarantine; and if Mr. Gryce at Lionnet had not been the
cipher he was, his illness too would have disbarred him.

There was nothing of the saint by nature nor of the instinctive
philanthropist about Leam. She was too concentrated for general
benevolence, and men and women whom she did not know were little more
than symbols to her. When she loved it was with her whole heart, her
whole being: failing this kind of love, she had but weak affections
and no curiosity, in which much of our ordinary charity consists. When
the servants told her of such and such distressing circumstances, she
was sorry because they were sorry, not because she realized in her own
emotions the troubles she did not share or see. When prompted she sent
improper things in the way of diet and useless things in the way
of dress for the benefit of the poor fever patients--and she sent
generously--but it never occurred to her as possible that she should
go to see them in their own homes. When we read of a cyclone in China
which has killed half a hundred mandarins and a small army of coolies,
we realize the sorrow of the survivors no more than we realize the
distress of a disturbed ant-hill; and Leam's attitude of mind toward
the poor of her native village was precisely the same as ours toward
the Chinese killed in a cyclone or the ants murdered in their hill.

But she went daily to Steel's Corner, because she knew the Corfields
and in her own way liked Alick. Mrs. Corfield assured her there was
no danger, not a particle, with her free use of disinfectants and her
cunning devices of ventilation. And Leam believed her, and acted on
her belief, which gave her a false look of heroism and devotion that
won the heart of poor Pepita's "crooked stick" for ever. She thought
it so good of the girl, so brave and unselfish; and you could scarcely
have expected such nice feeling from Leam, now could you? she used
to ask her husband half a dozen times a day, ringing the changes
on Leam's good qualities as no one in the place had ever rung them
before, and disturbing the poor doctor in his calculations on the
varying strength of henbane and aconite till he wished that Leam
Dundas had never been born. Mrs. Corfield was just as wrong in
ascribing heroic qualities to the girl for her daily visits to ask
after Alick as she had been when she had credited her with moral
faults because of her intellectual ignorance. She was not