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If you don't agree with me, I must go to Mrs. Gallilee myself. In that case please return, by the bearer, the papers which are enclosed." The clerk instructed to deliver these documents, within the shortest possible space of time, found Mr. Mool waiting at the office, on his return. He answered his master's inquiries by producing Benjulia's reply.
He answered as if the subject was disagreeable to him and yet he returned to it. "By-the-by, did you ever hear Benjulia's name mentioned, at home in Italy?" "Never! Did he know my father and mother?" "He says so." "Oh, do introduce me to him!" "We must wait a little. He prefers being introduced to the monkey to-day. Where are Miss Minerva and the children?" Teresa replied.
He had purposed writing to Carmina, but the idea was now inevitably pressed out of his mind. It was only at the close of the day's work that he had leisure to think of a matter of greater importance that is to say, of the necessity of discovering Benjulia's friend of other days, the Italian teacher Baccani.
"Doctor Benjulia is what we call a Specialist," he said. "I mean that he only professes to treat certain diseases. Brains and nerves are Benjulia's diseases. Without quite discontinuing his medical practice, he limits himself to serious cases when other doctors are puzzled, you know, and want him to help them.
"Well?" said Miss Minerva. "How do I look?" Maria still hesitated. Zo spoke out as usual. "You look as if somebody had frightened you." After two days of rain, the weather cleared again. It was a calm, sunshiny Sunday morning. The flat country round Benjulia's house wore its brightest aspect on that clear autumn day.
When the servant returned with the dinner, the master's private reflections continued to amuse him: his thin lips were still widening grimly, distended by his formidable smile. On being carved, the mutton proved to be underdone. At other times, this was an unpardonable crime in Benjulia's domestic code of laws. All he said now was, "Take it away." He dined on potatoes, and bread and cheese.
Not the vestige of a change appeared in Benjulia's impenetrable composure. She might have been a man or a baby or the picture of a girl instead of the girl herself, so far as he was concerned. He quietly returned to his question. "Well," he resumed "and what is love?" Not a word, not a movement escaped her. "I want to know," he persisted, waiting for what might happen. Nothing happened.
Benjulia's profound and practised observation detected a trifling inequality in the size of the pupils of the eyes, and a slightly unequal action on either side of the face delicately presented in the eyelids, the nostrils, and the lips. Here was no common affection of the brain, which even Mr. Null could understand!
"How is it that she is only found out now? Years have passed since she died. More years have passed since this attack on her character reached Doctor Benjulia's knowledge. He is an old friend of yours. Why has he only told you of it to-day? I hope I don't offend you by asking these questions?" "Oh, dear, no! your questions are so easily answered.
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