"So you have taken my advice," he said. "You're going to Canada, and you want to get at what I can tell you before you start. Here's my journal.

It will jog my memory, and help us both."

His writing materials were placed on a movable table, screwed to his chair. Near them lay a shabby-looking book, guarded by a lock. Ten minutes after he had opened his journal, and had looked here and there through the pages, his hard intellect had grasped all that it required.

Steadily and copiously his mind emptied its information into Ovid's mind; without a single digression from beginning to end, and with the most mercilessly direct reference to the traveller's practical wants.

Not a word escaped him, relating to national character or to the beauties of Nature. Mrs. Gallilee had criticized the Falls of Niagara as a reservoir of wasted power. Doctor Benjulia's scientific superiority over the woman asserted itself with magnificent ease. Niagara being nothing but useless water, he never mentioned Niagara at all.

"Have I served your purpose as a guide?" he asked. "Never mind thanking me. Yes or no will do. Very good. I have got a line of writing to give you next." He mended his quill pen, and made an observation. "Have you ever noticed that women have one pleasure which lasts to the end of their lives?" he said. "Young and old, they have the same inexhaustible enjoyment of society; and, young and old, they are all alike incapable of understanding a man, when he says he doesn't care to go to a party.

Even your clever mother thinks you want to go to parties in Canada." He tried his pen, and found it would do--and began his letter.

Seeing his hands at work, Ovid was again reminded of Carmina's discovery. His eyes wandered a little aside, towards the corner formed by the pillar of the chimney-piece and the wall of the room. The big bamboo-stick rested there. A handle was attached to it, made of light-coloured horn, and on that handle there were some stains. Ovid looked at them with a surgeon's practised eye. They were dry stains of blood. (Had he washed his hands on the last occasion when he used his stick? And had he forgotten that the handle wanted washing too?)

Benjulia finished his letter, and wrote the address. He took up the envelope, to give it to Ovid--and stopped, as if some doubt tempted him to change his mind. The hesitation was only momentary. He persisted in his first intention, and gave Ovid the letter. It was addressed to a doctor at Montreal.

"That man won't introduce you to society," Benjulia announced, "and won't worry your brains with medical talk. Keep off one subject on your side. A mad bull is nothing to my friend if you speak of Vivisection."

Ovid looked at him steadily, when he uttered the last word. Benjulia looked back, just as steadily at Ovid.

At the moment of that reciprocal scrutiny, did the two men suspect each other? Ovid, on his side, determined not to leave the house without putting his suspicions to the test.

"I thank you for the letter," he began; "and I will not forget the warning."

The doctor's capacity for the exercise of the social virtues had its limits. His reserves of hospitality were by this time near their end.

"Is there anything more I can do for you?" he interposed.

"You can answer a simple question," Ovid replied. "My cousin Carmina--"

Benjulia interrupted him again: "Don't you think we said enough about your cousin in the Gardens?" he suggested.

Ovid acknowledged the hint with a neatness of retort almost worthy of his mother. "You have your own merciful disposition to blame, if I return to the subject," he replied. "My cousin cannot forget your kindness to the monkey."

"The sooner she forgets my kindness the better. The monkey is dead."

"I am glad to hear it."

"Why?"

"I thought the creature was living in pain."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I heard a moaning--"

"Where?"

"In the building behind your house."

"You heard the wind in the trees."

"Nothing of the sort. Are your chemical experiments ever made on animals?"

The doctor parried that direct attack, without giving ground by so much as a hair's breadth.

"What did I say when I gave you your letter of introduction?" he asked.

"I said, A mad bull is nothing to my friend, if you speak to him of Vivisection. Now I have something more to tell you. I am like my friend." He waited a little. "Will that do?" he asked.

"Yes," said Ovid; "that will do."

They were as near to an open quarrel as two men could be: Ovid took up his hat to go. Even at that critical moment, Benjulia's strange jealousy of his young colleague--as a possible rival in some field of discovery which he claimed as his own--showed itself once more. There was no change in his tone; he still spoke like a judicious friend.

"A last word of advice," he said. "You are travelling for your health; don't let inquisitive strangers lead you into talk. Some of them might be physiologists."

"And might suggest new ideas," Ovid rejoined, determined to make him speak out this time.

Benjulia nodded, in perfect agreement with his guest's view.

"Are you afraid of new ideas?" Ovid went on.

"Perhaps I am--in _your_ head." He made that admission, without hesitation or embarrassment. "Good-bye!" he resumed. "My sensitive foot feels noises: don't bang the door."

Getting out into the lane again, Ovid looked at his letter to the doctor at Montreal. His first impulse was to destroy it.

As Benjulia had hesitated before giving him the letter, so he now hesitated before tearing it up.

Contrary to the usual practice in such cases, the envelope was closed.

Under those circumstances, Ovid's pride decided him on using the introduction. Time was still to pass, before events opened his eyes to the importance of his decision. To the end of his life he remembered that Benjulia had been near to keeping back the letter, and that he had been near to tearing it up.

CHAPTER XX.

The wise ancient who asserted that "Time flies," must have made that remarkable discovery while he was in a state of preparation for a journey. When are we most acutely sensible of the shortness of life?

When do we consult our watches in perpetual dread of the result?

When does the night steal on us unawares, and the morning take us by surprise? When we are going on a journey.

The remaining days of the week went by with a rush. Ovid had hardly time to ask himself if Friday had really come, before the hours of his life at home were already numbered.

He had still a little time to spare when he presented himself at Fairfield Gardens late in the afternoon. Finding no one in the library, he went up to the drawing-room. His mother was alone, reading.

"Have you anything to say to me, before I tell Carmina that you are here?" Mrs. Gallilee put that question quietly, so far as her voice was concerned. But she still kept her eyes on her book. Ovid knew that she was offering him his first and last chance of speaking plainly, before he went away. In Carmina's interests he spoke.

"Mother," he said, "I am leaving the one person in the world who is most precious to me, under your care."

"Do you mean," Mrs. Gallilee asked, "that you and Carmina are engaged to be married?"

"I mean that; and I am not sure that you approve of the engagement. Will you be plainer with me than you were on the last occasion when we spoke on this subject?"