Mrs.Bell quickly joined him, and she looked more important and mysterious still.
"Matty isn't well," she said, sinking her voice to a stage whisper.
"Matty has been badly treated; she has had a blight." "Dear, dear!" said Doctor Morris.
He was a fat, comfortable-looking man, his hands in particular were very fat, and when he warred to show special sympathy he was fond of rubbing them.
"Dear, dear!" he repeated.

"A blight! That's more a phrase to apply to the potato than to a blooming young girl." "All the same, doctor, it's true.

Matty has been blighted.

She had set her young affections where they were craved and sought, and, so to speak, begged for.

She gave them, _not willingly_, doctor, but after all the language that melting eyes, and more melting words, could employ.