Poor Lady Verinder (reclining thoughtlessly on her own sofa cushions)
glanced at the book, and handed it back to me looking more confused than
ever.
"I'm afraid, Drusilla," she said, "I must wait till I am a little
better, before I can read that. The doctor----"
The moment she mentioned the doctor's name, I knew what was coming.
Over and over again in my past experience among my perishing
fellow-creatures, the members of the notoriously infidel profession
of Medicine had stepped between me and my mission of mercy--on
the miserable pretence that the patient wanted quiet, and that the
disturbing influence of all others which they most dreaded, was the
influence of Miss Clack and her Books. Precisely the same blinded
materialism (working treacherously behind my back) now sought to rob me
of the only right of property that my poverty could claim--my right of
spiritual property in my perishing aunt.
"The doctor tells me," my poor misguided relative went on, "that I am
not so well to-day. He forbids me to see any strangers; and he orders
me, if I read at all, only to read the lightest and the most amusing
books. 'Do nothing, Lady Verinder, to weary your head, or to quicken
your pulse'--those were his last words, Drusilla, when he left me
to-day.
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