y. How he begged off Harrow,
much to the disgust of the Squire, and went to Westward Ho, faithfully
plodded the course laid down by the Council of Medical Education, became a
graduate of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and took his degree brilliantly;
registered as a student at St. Stephen's Hospital; won an Entrance
Scholarship in Science, and secured the William Brown Exhibition in his
second year. Thenceforward the world was an oyster, to be opened with
scalpel and with bistoury by Owen Saxham.

Oh, the good days! the delectable years of intellectual development, and
arduous study, and high hope, and patient, strenuous endeavour! The man
sitting with knitted hands and tense brain and staring eyes there in the
darkening room groaned aloud as he looked back. Nobody envied that
broad-shouldered, lean-flanked, bright-eyed young fellow his successes.
Companions shared his triumphs, lecturers and professors came down from
their high pedestals of dignity to help him on. When he obtained his
London University diploma with honours for a thesis of exceptional merit,
he had already held the post of principal anaesthetist at St. Stephen's
Hospital for a year. Now, a vacancy occurring upon the Junior staff of
surgeons to the Hospital's in-patient Department, Owen Saxham, M.D., was
chosen to fill it. This brought Mildred very near.

For he was very much in love. The hot red blood in his veins had carried
him away sometimes upon a mad race for pleasure, but he was clean of soul
and free from the taint of vice, inherited or acquired, and the Briton's
love of home was strong in him. And wedded love had always seemed to him a
beautiful and gracious thing; and fatherhood a glorious privilege. Stern
as he seemed, grave and quiet and undemonstrative as he was, the youngest
and shyest children did not shrink from him. The pink rose-leaf tongue
peeped from between the budding rows of teeth, and the innocent
considering eyes questioned him only a moment before the smile came. To be
the father of Mildred's children seemed the lofty end of all desire that
was not mere worldly ambition.

Mildred was the elder daughter of a county neighbour down in Dorsetshire.
She had known Owen Saxham from her school-days, but never until he took to
calling at the house in Pont Street, to which Mildred, with her
family--mere satellites revolving in the orbit of that shining star of
Love--migrated in the Season. She was tall, slight, and willowy, with a
sweet head