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." There was no help for it but to yield again--for the moment only, as before.

Any open assertion of the infinitely superior importance of such a ministry as mine, compared with the ministry of the medical man, would only have provoked the doctor to practise on the human weakness of his patient, and to threaten to throw up the case.

Happily, there are more ways than one of sowing the good seed, and few persons are better versed in those ways than myself.
"You might feel stronger, dear, in an hour or two," I said.