"Oh, I am not selfish, like that!" retorted the other, but with a heightened color. "I can admire, where I can do no more; and Miss Farrell likes me to find her fair, if I mistake not."
"Oh, I suppose she can flirt!" replied Graeme. "Most of the young ladies here seem to be able to do that. Only 'beware,' she may be 'fooling thee.'"
"Thou art growing cynical, mein Roland! Thou thinkest too much! I shall bid thee good-night. Schlafe wohl!"
"Du auch!" returned Roland, who liked to keep up with Waldberg the German colloquialisms he had learned abroad. "Poor fellow," he said to himself, as he listened to the retreating footsteps, "I am afraid she is 'fooling' him." He had heard a great deal, of late, about Miss Farrell, who was one of "Herr Waldberg's" most promising pupils as a pianist, and from whom Roland believed that the young man was taking lessons of a more dangerous kind. However, after all, it was no business of his, and Waldberg ought to be able to take care of himself.
But he pondered a little over what seemed to him the strangeness of Mr. Chillingworth's finding it so easy to spend an hour or two enjoyably, talking music with a completely irreligious young man like Waldberg, while he could not spare him a few minutes for the discussion of matters which affected the well-being, higher and lower, of so many thousands, and which concerned the practical diffusion of principles of action which he had supposed must be at least as dear to the clergyman as they were to himself. Roland did not yet know how easily some men can absorb themselves in beautiful ideals and vague generalities, till the practical side of life, with its tiresome details and rude collisions, becomes for them almost non-existent.
And so Mr. Chillingworth "admired Miss Blanchard immensely"! Roland felt interest enough in the young lady to wish her a better fate than a man whom he had begun mentally to sum up as "an egoistic iceberg." However, his business in life was not to settle the destinies of either Mr. Chillingworth or Miss Blanchard, or even of Miss Farrell and Hermann Waldberg. So he presently forgot them all in finishing the article in which he had been interrupted, and then went to bed to sleep that sleep of the laborer, which is "sweet" only when neither brain nor muscles have been overstrained to exhaustion.
CHAPTER VIII.
NORA'S DREAM.
Mr. Alden found that Dr. Blanchard quite agreed with him as to the importance of getting their patient removed to the hospital. The doctor thought that her case was by no means hopeless, provided she could be supplied with the constant care and nourishment she so urgently needed, and this could scarcely be secured for her except in the hospital. Dr. Blanchard, who had all the ready, practical kindness which usually marks members of the medical profession, added to that of a naturally kind heart, willingly undertook to make the arrangements for the invalid's removal.