personality, so that people were apt to feel at their best in his
society. Meanwhile his books came out one after another--not great
books exactly, but full of humour and perception, each an advance
on the last. By the age of thirty he was accepted as one of the
most promising novelists of the day.

Then he did what I never expected he would do; he fell wildly and
enthusiastically in love with the only daughter of a
Gloucestershire clergyman, a man of good family and position. She
was the only child; her mother had died some years before, and her
father died shortly after the marriage. She was a beautiful,
vigorous girl, extraordinarily ingenuous, simple-minded, and
candid. She was not clever in the common acceptance of the term,
and was not the sort of person by whom I should have imagined that
my friend would have been attracted. They settled in a pleasant
house, which they built in Surrey, on the outskirts of a village.
Three children were born to them--a boy and a girl, and another
boy, who survived his birth only a few hours. From this time he
almost entirely deserted London, and became, I thought, almost
strangely content with a quiet domestic life. I was often with them
in those early days, and I do not think I ever saw a happier
circle. It was a large and comfortable house, very pleasantly
furnished, with a big garden. His father died in the early years of
the marriage, and left him a good income; with the proceeds of his
books he was a comparatively wealthy man. His wife was one of those
people who have a serene and unaffected interest in human beings.
She was a religious woman, but her relations with others were
rather based on the purest kindliness and sympathy. She knew every
one in the place, and, having no touch of shyness, she went in and
out among their poorer neighbours, the trusted friend and