care-for John Clermont made no difference whatever in his treatment of the two girls. Mr Clermont was very fond of society, and he very often had friends staying in the house-men friends, that is to say. As to ladies, he had reverted to his old feelings towards the sex,-feelings that had held good up to the time of his marriage, which event had not occurred until he was nearly fifty, before which time he had never been known to speak willingly to a woman-and to that most unchivalric state he had returned after his wife's death; so, having procured an elderly lady to act as chaperon to the girls, he felt he had quite done his duty as far as womankind was concerned, and might now go his own way and amuse himself. But there were always plenty of men, and with them, as with every one else, Nenuphar was the favourite, and Heather merely a very ordinary girl, not remarkable in any way rather bad-tempered too-but still forming an admirable contrast to the wonderful beauty of Nenuphar. All the admiration, all the love, fell to her share, and it was the more curious, as it seemed impossible for her to return any one's tenderness. She smiled graciously on all alike, and was always willing to receive any amount of admiration, but that was all; yet, strange to say, it seemed utterly impossible for any man to care for, or even think of, any other woman while she was present, though wherein lay her exact fascination it would have been difficult to say, beyond mere beauty. Perhaps it was the sense of rest and quiet that was always about her, setting her apart, as it were, from every one else in a world of her own-a world from which all toil and care had been carefully excluded. Although in that way the girls saw a good many strangers, they had rarely, if ever, gone beyond the precincts of their own home. The world outside the grounds of Wykeham Manor had always been denied them, Mr Clermont being of opinion that girls could not go too little abroad; therefore it was not altogether strange that they had entered into their nineteenth year before they saw Sebastian Long. Sebastian Long was the greatest landowner in the neighbourhood, and "eccentric" was the mildest word used when speaking of him; indeed there were found some to hint cautiously and with bated breath of madness, although the only symptom evinced was that he had shut up the great house that his forefathers had bequeathed to him, and had spent a roving life in foreign lands, in preference to staying quietly and decorously at home. But there was, as there generally is, another side to the question. The said house was large, and somewhat gloomy and lonely for a man. who had neither wife nor mother to keep him company in it; so it was not perhaps altogether so wonderful his preferring to spend his time amongst his mother's Spanish relations, who made for him the nearest approach to a home he had ever known. And now as to how and where he and his neighbours first met. It was the evening of a lovely summer's day, just such a one as that early dawn on which Nenuphar first made her appearance might have grown into later on, when the mists and the dew had alike passed away, giving place to something brighter and more glorious. But, as on that other occasion, the work of the day was not begun, so on this it was over and done with, and the two girls were out on the terrace that surrounded the house, Nenuphar lazily reclining on the CHAPTER XIV. "My father was an American, my mother English. I was born near Epsom, and lived there ten years. Then my father had property left him in Massachusetts, and we went to Boston. Both my parents educated me, and began very early. I observe that most parents are babies at teaching, compared with mine. My father was a linguist, and taught me to lisp German, French, and English; my mother was an ideaed woman: she taught me three rarities-attention, observation, and accuracy. If I went a walk in the country, I had to bring her home a budget; the men and women on the road, their dresses, appearance, countenances, and words; every kind of bird in the air, and insect and chrysalis in the hedges; the crops in the fields, the flowers and herbs on the banks. If I walked in the town, I must not be eyes and no eyes; woe betide me if I could only report the dresses. Really, I have known me, when I was but eight, come home to my mother laden with details, when perhaps an untrained girl of eighteen could only have specified that she had gone up and down a thoroughfare. Another time mother would take me on a visit: next day, or perhaps next week, she would expect me to describe every article of furniture in her friend's room, and the books on the table, and repeat the conversation, the topics at all events. She taught me to master history accurately. To do this she was artful enough to turn sport into science. She utilised a game young people in Boston play it. A writes an anecdote on paper, or perhaps produces it in print. She reads it off to B. goes away, and writes it down by memory; then reads her writing B out to C. C has to listen, and convey her impression to paper. This she reads to D, and D goes and writes it. Then the original story and D's version are compared ; and generally speaking, the difference of the two is a caution—against oral tradition: when the steps of deviation are observed, it is quite a study. "My mother, with her good wit, saw there was something better than fun to be got out of this. She trained my memory of great things with it. She began with striking passages of history, and played the game with father and me. But, as my power of retaining, and repeating correctly, grew, by practice, she enlarged the business, and kept enriching my memory, so that I began to have tracts of history at my fingers' ends. As I grew older, she extended the sport to laws and the great public controversies in religion, politics, and philosophy that have agitated the world. But here she had to get assistance from her learned friends. She was a woman valued by men of intellect, and she had no mercy-milked jurists, physicians, and theologians, and historians, all into my little pail. To be sure, they were as kind about it as she was unscrupulous. They saw I was a keen student, and gave my mother many a little gem in writing. She read them out to me: I listened hard, and thus I fixed many great and good things in my trained memory; and repeated them against the text: I was never allowed to see that. "With this sharp training, school subjects were child's play to me, and I won a good many prizes very easily. My mother would not let me waste a single minute over music. She used to say, 'Music they teach in schools, especially drawing, and that is useful in scientific pursuits, I was allowed to choose my own books, and attend extracts what little brains a girl has. Open the piano, you shut the understanding.' I am afraid I bore you with my mother." "Not at all, not at all. I ad- lectures. One blessed day I sat mire her." "Oh, thank you-thank you, sir. She never uses big words; so it is only of late I have had the nous to see how wise she is: she corrected the special blots of the female character in me; and it is sweet to me to talk of that dear friend. What would I give to see her here!" "Well, then, sir, she made me, as far as she could, a-what shall I say?-a kind of little intellectual gymnast, fit to begin any study; but she left me to choose my own line. Well, I was for natural history first; began like a girl; gathered wild flowers and simples at Epsom, along with - an old woman: she discoursed on their traditional virtues, and knew little of their real properties; that I have discovered since. "From herbs to living things; never spared a chrysalis, but always took it home, and watched it break into wings. Hung over the ponds in June, watching the eggs of the frog turn to tadpoles, and the tadpoles to Johnny Crapaud. I obeyed Scripture in one thing, for I studied the ants and their ways. and listened to Agassiz-ah! No Sir, earth "I followed him about like a little bloodhound, and dived into the libraries after each subject he treated or touched. "It was another little epoch in my life when I read White's letters to Pennant about natural history in Selborne. Selborne is an English village, not half so pretty as most; and, until Gilbert White came, nobody saw anything there worth printing. His book showed me that the humblest spot in nature becomes extraordinary the moment extraordinary observation is applied to it. I must mimic Gilbert White directly. I pestered my poor parents to spend a month or two in the "I collected birds' eggs. At depths of the country, on the verge of nine, not a boy in the parish could a forest. They yielded, with groans; find more nests in a day than I I kissed them, and we rusticated. could. With birds'-nesting, buy- I pried into every living thing, not ing, and now and then begging, I forgetting my old friends the insect. made a collection, that figures in a tribe. Here I found ants with museum over the water, and is en- grander ideas than they have to titled, 'Eggs of British Birds.' home, and satisfied myself they The colours attract, and people al- have more brains than apes. They ways stop at it. But it does no co-operate more, and in complicated justice whatever to the great variety things. Sir, there are ants that of sea-birds' eggs on the coast of make greater marches, for their size, Britain. than Napoleon's invasion of Russia. "When I had learned what little Even the less nomad tribes will march through fields of grass, where each blade is a high gum-tree to them, and never lose the track. I saw an army of red ants, with generals, captains, and ensigns, start at daybreak, march across a road, through a hedge, and then through high grass till noon, and surprise a and surprise a fortification of black ants and take it after a sanguinary resistance. All that must have been planned beforehand, you know, and carried out to the letter. Once I found a colony busy on some hard ground, preparing an abode. I happened to have been microscoping a wasp, so I threw him down among the ants. They were disgusted. They ran about collecting opinions. Presently half of them burrowed into the earth below and undermined him, till he lay on a crust of earth as thin as a wafer, and a deep grave below. Then they all got on him except one, and he stood pompous on a pebble and gave orders. The earth broke the wasp went down into his grave and the ants soon covered him with loose earth, and resumed their domestic architecture. I concluded that though the monkey resembles man most in body, the ant comes nearer him in mind. As for dogs, I don't know where to rank them in nature, because they have been pupils of man for centuries. I bore you?" "No." "Oh yes, I do: an enthusiast is always a bore. 'Les facheux' of Molière are just enthusiasts. Well, sir, in one word, I was a natural philosopher-very small, but earnest; and, in due course, my studies brought me to the wonders of the human body. I studied the outlines of anatomy in books and plates, and prepared figures; and from that, by degrees, I was led on to surgery and medicine-in books, you understand; and they are only half the battle. Medicine is a thing one can do; it is a noble science, a practical science, and a subtle science, where I thought my powers of study and observation might help me to be keen at reading symptoms, and do good to man, and be a famous woman; so I concluded to benefit mankind and myself. Stop! that sounds like self-deception. It must have been myself and mankind I concluded to benefit. Any way, I pestered that small section of mankind, which consisted of my parents, until they consented to let me study medicine in Europe." "What! all by yourself?" "Yes. Oh, girls are very independent in the States, and govern the old people. Mine said 'No' a few dozen times; but they were bound to end in 'Yes,' and I went to Zurich. I studied hard there, and earned the approbation of the professors: but the school deteriorated; too many ladies poured in from Russia; some were not in earnest, and preferred flirting to study, and did themselves no good, and made the male students idle, and wickeder than ever-if pos sible." "What else could you expect?” said Vizard. "Nothing else from unpicked women. But, when all the schools in Europe shall be open-as they ought to be, and must, and shall— there will be no danger of shallow girls crowding to any particular school. Besides, there will be a more strict and rapid routine of examination then to sift out the female flirts-and the male dunces along with them, I hope. "Well, sir, we few, that really meant medicine, made inquiries, and heard of a famous old school in the south of France, where women had graduated of old; and two of us went there to try-an Italian lady and myself. We carried good testimonials from Zu upon my routine of rich; and, not to frighten the and enter Frenchmen at starting, I attacked studies. So I was admitted on them alone. Cornelia was my elder, and my superior in attainments; she was a true descendant of those learned ladies who have adorned the chairs of philosophy, jurisprudence, anatomy, and medicine in her native country; but she has the wisdom of the serpent, as well as of the sage; and she put me forward because of my red hair. She said that would be a passport to the dark philosophers of France." "Was not that rather foxy, Miss Gale?" "Foxy as my hair itself, Mr Vizard." “Well, I applied to a professor. He received me with profound courtesy and feigned respect, but was staggered at my request to matriculate. He gesticulated and bowed à la Française, and begged the permission of his foxy-haired invader from northern climes to consult his colleagues. Would I do him the great honour to call again next day at twelve? I did, and met three other polished authorities. One spoke for all, and said: If I had not brought with me proofs of serious study, they should have dissuaded me very earnestly from a science I could not graduate in without going through practical courses of anatomy and clinical surgery. That, however (with a regular French shrug), was my business, not theirs. It was not for them to teach me delicacy, but rather to learn it from me. That was a French sneer. The French are un gens moqueur, you know. I received both shrug and sneer like marble. He ended it all by saying: The school had no written law excluding doctresses; and the old records proved women had graduated, and even lectured, there. I had only to pay my fees, sufferance; but I soon earned the good opinion of the professors, and of this one in particular: and then Cornelia applied for admission, and was let in too. We lived together, and had no secrets; and I think, sir, I may venture to say that we showed some little wisdom, if you consider our age, and all that was done to spoil us. As to parrying their little sly attempts at flirtation, that is nothing; we came prepared but, when our fellowstudents found we were in earnest, and had high views, the chivalrous spirit of a gallant nation took fire, and they treated us with a delicate reverence that might have turned any woman's head. But we had the credit of a sneered-at sex to keep up, and felt our danger, and warned each other; and I remember I told Cornelia how many young ladies in the States I had seen puffed up by the men's extravagant homage, and become spoiled children, and offensively arrogant and discourteous; so I entreated her to check those vices in me the moment she saw them coming. "When we had been here a year, attending all the lectures-clinical medicine and surgery includednews came that one British school, Edinburgh, had shown symptoms of yielding to Continental civilisation, and relaxing monopoly. That turned me north directly. My mother is English: I wanted to be a British doctress, not a French. Cornelia had misgivings, and even condescended to cry over me. But I am a'mule, and always was. Then that dear friend made terms with me; I must not break off my connection with the French school, she said. No; she had thought it well over: I must ask leave of the French professors to study in the north, and bring back notes about those |