er in
her eyes, left there by the agony of shame she had been put
through, Kitty stood in the middle of the room. When the doctor
came in she flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with tears. All
her illness and treatment struck her as a thing so stupid,
ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as
putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was
broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?
But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother
considered herself to blame.

"May I trouble you to sit down, princess?" the celebrated doctor
said to her.

He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again
began asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at
once got up, furious.

"Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This
is the third time you've asked me the same thing."

The celebrated doctor did not take offense.

"Nervous irritability," he said to the princess, when Kitty had
left the room. "However, I had finished..."

And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess,
as an exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young
princess, and concluded by insisting on the drinking of
the waters, which were certainly harmless. At the question:
Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into deep meditation,
as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision was
pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in
foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.

It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass
after the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful
when she went back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be
more cheerful. She had often, almost always, to be pretending
now.

"Really, I'm quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad,
let's go!" she said, and trying to appear interested in the
proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations for the
journey.

Chapter 2

Soon after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there
was to be a consultation that day, and though she was only just
up after her confinement (she had another baby, a little girl,
born at the end of the winter), though she had trouble and
anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a sick
child, to come and hear Kitty's fate, which was to be decided
that day.

"Well, well?" she said, coming into the drawing room, without
taki