ut his heart--

"Surely, never before did a man win a wife as you have won me! You made
me well by putting your own life into me; so what could I do but give
you the life that was already your own!"

Thus day followed day on golden wings: Lefevre in the morning occupied
with the patients that thronged his consulting-room; in the afternoon
dispensing healing, and, where healing was impossible, cheerfulness and
courage, in his hospital wards; and in the evening finding inspiration
and strength in the company of Lady Mary--for her love was to him better
than wine. All who went to him in those days found him changed, and in a
sense glorified. He had always been considerate and kind; but the
weakness, the folly, and the wickedness of poor human nature, which were
often laid bare to his searching scrutiny, had frequently plunged him
into a welter of despondency and shame, out of which he would cry, "Alas
for God's image! Alas for the temple of the Holy Ghost!" But in those
days it seemed as if disease and death appeared to him mere trivial
accidents of life, with the result that no "case," however bad, was sent
away empty of hope.

Chapter VIII.

Strange Scenes in Curzon Street.

It happened, however, that just when all the bays and creeks of Dr
Lefevre's attention were occupied, as by a springtide, with the
excellent, the divine fortune that had come to him,--when he seemed thus
most completely divorced from anxious speculation about Julius Courtney
and "M. Dolaro," his attention was suddenly and in unexpected fashion
hurried again to the mystery. The doctor had not seen Julius since the
day he had received him in his bedroom--it must be admitted he had not
sought to see him--but he had heard now and then from his mother, in
casual notes and postscripts, that Courtney continued to call in Curzon
Street.

On a certain evening Lady Lefevre gave a dinner and a reception,
designed to introduce Lady Mary to the Lefevre circle. Julius was not at
dinner (at which only members of the two families sat down), but he was
expected to appear later. It is probable, under the circumstances, that
Lefevre would not have remarked the absence of Julius from the
dinner-table, had it not been for Nora. He was painfully struck with her
appearance and demeanour. She seemed to have lost much of her beautiful
vigour and bloom of health, like a flower that has been for some time
cut from its stem; and she, who had been wont to be ready