go with her daughter's. So far, then, as honour is concerned, all
scruples vanish."

I sprang from my seat, radiant with joy. Mrs. Poyntz dryly
continued: "You value yourself on your common-sense, and to that I address
a few words of counsel which may not be welcome to your romance. I said
that I did not think you and Lilian would suit each other in the long run;
reflection confirms me in that supposition. Do not look at me so
incredulously and so sadly. Listen, and take heed. Ask yourself what, as
a man whose days are devoted to a laborious profession, whose ambition is
entwined with its success, whose mind must be absorbed in its
pursuits,--ask yourself what kind of a wife you would have sought to win;
had not this sudden fancy for a charming face rushed over your better
reason, and obliterated all previous plans and resolutions. Surely some
one with whom your heart would have been quite at rest; by whom your
thoughts would have been undistracted from the channels into which your
calling should concentrate their flow; in short, a serene companion in the
quiet holiday of a trustful home! Is it not so?"

"You interpret my own thoughts when they have turned towards marriage.
But what is there in Lilian Ashleigh that should mar the picture you have
drawn?"

"What is there in Lilian Ashleigh which in the least accords with the
picture? In the first place, the wife of a young physician should not be
his perpetual patient. The more he loves her, and the more worthy she may
be of love, the more her case will haunt him wherever he goes. When he
returns home, it is not to a holiday; the patient he most cares for, the
anxiety that most gnaws him, awaits him there."