It was Dr.Cautley's business to look after Miss Quincey in her illness, and it was Rhoda's to keep an eye on her in her recovery, and instantly report the slightest threatening of a break-down.

Miss Quincey's somewhat eccentric behaviour filled her with misgivings; and in order to investigate her case at leisure, she chose the first afternoon when Miss Cursiter was not at home to ask the little arithmetic teacher to lunch.
After Rhoda's lunch, soothed with her sympathy and hidden, not to say extinguished, in an enormous chair, Miss Quincey was easily worked into the right mood for confidences; indeed she was in that state of mind when they rush out of their own accord in the utter exhaustion of the will.
"Are you sure you are perfectly well ?" so Rhoda began her inquiry.
"Perfectly, perfectly--in myself," said Miss Quincey, "I think, perhaps--that is, sometimes I'm a little afraid that taking so much arsenic may have disagreed with me.

You know it is a deadly poison.

But I've left it off lately, so I ought to be better--unless perhaps I'm feeling the want of it." "You are not worrying about St.Sidwell's--about your work ?" "It's not that--not that.

But to tell you the truth, I _am_ worried, Rhoda.