The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he

divined that they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of his

lost love's charms upon Fitzpiers.

"You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir," he said, with a

sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to mention

Grace by name.

"Oh no--I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I do by

the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid like a

Leyden-jar with electric, for want of some conductor at hand to

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disperse it. Human love is a subjective thing--the essence itself of

man, as that great thinker Spinoza the philosopher says--ipsa hominis

essentia--it is joy accompanied by an idea which we project against any

suitable object in the line of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is

projected against an oak, ash, or elm tree indifferently. So that if

any other young lady had appeared instead of the one who did appear, I

should have felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted

precisely the same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one I

saw. Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!"

"Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts, whether or

no," said Winterborne.

"You are right enough if you admit that I am in love with something in

my own head, and no thing in itself outside it at all."

"Is it part of a country doctor's duties to learn that view of things,

may I ask, sir?" said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic {Greek word:

irony} with such well-assumed simplicity that Fitzpiers answered,

readily, "Oh no. The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in

places like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter; a bottle of bitter

stuff for this and that old woman--the bitterer the better--compounded

from a few simple stereotyped prescriptions; occasional attendance at

births, where mere presence is almost sufficient, so healthy and strong

are the people; and a lance for an abscess now and then. Investigation

and experiment cannot be carried on without more appliances than one

has here--though I have attempted it a little."

Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he had been struck

with was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers's manner and

Grace's, as shown by the fact of both of them straying into a subject

of discourse so engrossing to themselves that it made them forget it

was foreign to him.

Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation to

Grace till they were on their way back. They had stopped at a way-side

inn for a glass of brandy and cider hot, and when they were again in

motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the

subject by saying, "I should like very much to know who that young lady

was."




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