e was the only physician of repute, far and wide. She
was to be deprived of the services of this valuable ally, to whom little
Mary and many of the household owed their lives, by this Syrian girl;
and she herself, sure that she was a good and capable wife and mother,
was to stand there like a thing despised and avoided by every honest
man, through this evil genius of her house!

It was too much. Tortured by rage, vexation, and sincere distress, she
said in a complaining voice, while the tears started to her eyes:

"But what is the meaning of all this? You, who know me, who have seen
me ruling and caring for my family, you turn your back upon me in my
own house and point the finger at me? Have I not always been a faithful
wife, nursing my husband for years and never leaving his sick-bed,
never thinking of anything but how to ease his pain? I have lived like
a recluse from sheer sense of duty and faithful lose, while other wives,
who have less means than I, live in state and go to entertainments.--And
whose slaves are better kept and more often freed than ours? Where is
the beggar so sure of an alms as in our house, where I, and I alone,
uphold piety?--And now am I so fallen that the sun may not shine on me,
and that a worthy man like you should withdraw his friendship all in a
moment, and for the sake of this ungrateful, loveless creature--because,
because, what did you call it--because the mind is wanting in me--or
what did you call it that I must have before you...?"

"It is called feeling," interrupted the leech, who was sorry for the
unhappy woman, in whom he knew there was much that was good. "Is the
word quite new to you, my lady Neforis?--It is born with us; but a firm
will can elevate the least noble feeling, and the best that nature can
bestow will deteriorate through self-indulgence. But, in the day of
judgment, if I am not very much mistaken, it is not our acts but our
feeling that will be weighed. It would ill-become me to blame you, but
I may be allowed to pity you, for I see the disease in your soul which,
like gangrene in the body..."

"What next!" cried Neforis.

"This disease," the physician calmly went on--"I mean hatred, should be
far indeed from so pious a Christian. It has stolen into your heart like
a thief in the night, has eaten you up, has made bad blood, and led you
to treat this heavily-afflicted orphan as though you were to put stocks
and stones in the path of a blind man to make him fall.