Miss Milray laughed. "Doctors don't betray their patients--good doctors.
No, he hasn't been here, if that will help you. I wish it would help me, but it won't, quite. I don't like to think of that old woman using you up, Clementina."
"Oh, she doesn't, Miss Milray. You mustn't think so. You don't know how good she is to me."
"Does she ever remind you of it?"
Clementina's eyes fell. "She isn't like herself when she doesn't feel well."
"I knew it!" Miss Milray triumphed. "I always knew that she was a dreadful old tabby. I wish you were safely out of her clutches. Come and live with me, my dear, when Mrs. Lander gets tired of you. But she'll never get tired of you. You're just the kind of helpless mouse that such an old tabby would make her natural prey. But she sha'n't, even if another sort of cat has to get you! I'm sorry you couldn't come last night. Your little Russian was here, and went away early and very bitterly because you didn't come. He seemed to think there was nobody, and said so, in everything but words."
"Oh!" said Clementina. "Don't you think he's very nice, Miss Milray?"
"He's very mystical, or else so very simple that he seems so. I hope you can make him out."
Don't you think he's very much in ea'nest?
"Oh, as the grave, or the asylum. I shouldn't like him to be in earnest about me, if I were you."
"But that's just what he is! " Clementina told how the Russian had lectured her, and wished her to go back to the country and work in the fields.
"Oh, if that's all!" cried Miss Milray. I was afraid it was another kind of earnestness: the kind I shouldn't like if I were you."