“Yet I advise them not to overdo the remedy lest they think too much of me. I am extremely cautious, Mrs Laure.”
Dainty smiled again. Sentiment and the doctor seemed so absurd a combination to her. He was kind-hearted, but to think of him as an awakener of love—Ah! love brought to her mind another. She blushed, stopped, and thought of the doctor. It was a good remedy. He was looking at her. She felt a mixture of discomfort and a desire to tell him how great was her heartache. Had he asked her her secret, she would have told him. He divined her confidential mood, but asked nothing. It is sometimes wise to be ignorant. If the family physician should divulge the secrets of the inner life of the social sphere in which he moves, what a shattered world would we live in! The life of a hermit would at once hold irresistible charms for many.
What an innocent and ignorant violator of social and marital laws was Dainty! But ignorance and innocence are not as beautiful qualities as knowledge and purity. With the former, life is but drifting; with the latter, it is anchored to a rock.
The doctor realised that Dainty was drifting. He had seen many another woman drift, only to be broken against the rocks on bleak unknown shores; later he had seen the wreck washed up lying on the sands of life, exposed to the gaze of the gaping curiosity-seeker, and to his careless comments. Would this beautiful creature, wounded almost to death, be another wreck noted by pitying angels, and filling a sorrowful page in the book of Time? Not if he could help guide her. Ah! if our impulses are in the direction of the good, we know not how soon we may be given the opportunity to guide a frail bark clear of some threatening rock, into smiling waters, and under summer skies! The doctor’s opportunity came sooner than he anticipated.
“I will call in again, Mrs Laure,” said he, rising. “I have to see a patient a few hours’ ride from here, and on my return, will tell Mr Laure that he must take you to England. I am expecting to go home for a short trip this summer, I need a change, too. One gets rusty living in Africa without a sight of other lands.”
He took her little hand in his, gave it a quick, firm, friendly grasp, that seemed to say: “I know all about your trouble. Everything will come out all right.” Aloud he said: “You must stop thinking about yourself,” and left the house.