and sharing in his nursing to the utmost of her ability. With much natural and constitutional timidity, and an absence of all force of character, Mrs. Stephen was, nevertheless, not so entirely the water-colour sort of woman she might at first glance have been accounted. A little wanting in certainty of expression, with an air of refinement and culture that seemed to negative the possession of feelings, although the effect was in reality only to restrict their demonstration, and a particularity in dress, especially in regard to the minutiæ of the toilet, Mrs. Stephen Hadfield, notwithstanding these fashion-book characteristics, was genuinely kind and tender-hearted, with all feminine sympathy for suffering, and with abundance of the emotions that prompt self-sacrifice, had occasion ever demanded of her conduct of so high an order. Wilford, well, there was a strangeness about him which startled her whose respect for convention was inclined to be exaggerated; but her husband's brother, ill, helpless, in an agony of pain—dying, perhaps, all the noblest feelings of her heart had been excited on his behalf, and she would have toiled herself to death to benefit him in any, the slightest way. On the whole, Stephen Hadfield had reason to be proud of his wife. The woman had not been sacrificed to the lady—perhaps at one time there had been a danger of this—but Gertrude Hadfield had passed scatheless through the trial. Unlike some of her neighbours she had cleverness enough to perceive that although society requires from its members placidity and repose, by these are not necessarily implied either petrifaction of feeling or ossification of heart.
Have not sickness and suffering some kind of fascination for women? Is there not in these truly an "open sesame" to their hearts? But I fancy—may I so state without being deemed rude?—that women are always partial to anomalies, and that the combination of sovereignty and servitude involved in the act of nursing somehow particularly recommends it to their not too logical minds. Is a male writer to discuss such a question? But to rule in the sick room the slave of the sick man—is, it seems to me, a favourite position with women. There is a recognition of their power in it—while there is room for their tenderness—which, from its nature, must obey and serve rather than command and sway. Be well, healthy, vigorous in body and mind, and a woman finds something defiant in such a state—something antagonistic to herself, especially if she admit with M. Michelet, that she herself is "always an invalid,"—and her heart does not turn to you; your love will be too hard for her; you will rule and possess her, too, absolutely; she will be without a chance of governing ever so little in her turn, in her own peculiar way. Sink at her feet, pale, suffering, imploring her aid, and she will bend down with tears in her eyes, lavishing upon you the utmost treasure of her love, slaving for you as only women can slave, and she will be yours for ever, for will it not be your own fault if you permit her heart, once yours, to quit you when your health returns?
Gertrude, Vi, and Madge were indefatigable in their attendance upon Wilford Hadfield. If Mrs. Stephen was inclined to relieve the Miss Fullers of their share of nursing, the good doctor interfered on their behalf. As a doctor's daughters, he said if they did not understand nursing who did? And had not Vi nursed so and so, and so and so, on such and such an occasion, and wasn't her name, as a nurse, famous all through Grilling Abbots? So Mrs. Stephen was compelled to withdraw her opposition to the labours of the doctor's daughters, and especially her proposition that the housekeeper from the Grange should be sent to render assistance. The whole household of the doctor's cottage, including Hester the cook and Hannah the housemaid, were at the disposal of the invalid, and what more could he or any one possibly require?
Wilford bore his sufferings very patiently. With deep gratitude he watched the kind labours of his nurses on his account. He was terribly weak and thin, and there were now perceptible threads of gray in his long tangled hair. He spoke very little, but he was evidently emerging from that state of lethargy and listlessness into which he had fallen prior to his illness, possibly as a symptom of its approach. There was an animation in his large black eyes they had not known for some time.
"He will be all the better for this illness," said Mr. Fuller to Stephen, "when we once get him fairly through it. He will start afresh, as it were, on a new road; he will leave old habits of life, and thoughts, and plans a long way behind him."
"Has he spoke of his future proceedings? Do you think he has changed his views at all?" Stephen asked.
"He never mentions the subject, and I am careful not to do so. But I take it for granted he thinks very differently now. I shall conclude that he does so until I learn from his own lips the contrary. His getting well, now, is simply a matter of time. Pain has left him, or nearly so; he has now to regain his strength, and we mustn't hurry him. A man doesn't recover in a day from an illness like that."
For the patient, the tedium of convalescence seems to be only a few degrees less insufferable than the tedium of illness. How the eyes of the sick man fasten upon all the details of the room, and thoroughly exhaust them! That is a dreadful moment when you feel that you have quite done with the paper on the wall, and that by no possibility can further interest even unconsciously be drawn from it. Wilford knew all the rose-buds by heart—he knew exactly where they would spring out of the scroll-work, and where they would disappear behind it; he knew the place in the pattern where, by some accident in the printing, the colour of one particular rose was some half inch from its outline. He knew each join in the paper. He had studied every pleat in the dainty white bed-hangings; he had traced human faces in the lines of the curtains till further variety seemed impossible; he knew every stroke in the chalk-drawing (from Carlo Dolce—by Violet Fuller) hanging over the mantlepiece, until the expression of the face, reverential but inane, quite wearied and oppressed him. He knew all the panes in the lattice by heart, especially those diamonds of glass of different hue to their