uered the doctor as she had conquered Alan. For calm
self-assurance, irrepressible spirits, and undoubted charm he thought he
had never seen her equal, and, compared with the girl of his former
experience, seemed an inhabitant of another world.

Mrs. Hilary, too, was quite a new specimen of womanhood to him,
good-natured incapacity personified, as she was. Sometimes, when she
made some more than usually foolish remark, the doctor would catch
Maud's eye, and they would enjoy the joke together. Then he would rebuke
himself and inform himself that it was altogether out of order that he
should countenance such disrespect, and, what was worse, that he should
thoroughly enjoy the fun himself.

On Christmas evening, when he was first introduced to Mrs. Hilary, he
was quite bewildered by the vagueness of her conversation. Endeavouring
to make himself agreeable, he began to make inquiries as to the
whereabouts of Mr. Hilary Forester, who was travelling abroad.

"Well, I had a letter from him two days ago," she replied, "from Texas,
or Mexico--those foreign names are so alike, and I never was good at
geography, and the letters take such a long time to come that by the
time they get here the place is different--I mean, he has gone somewhere
else, so that I really never know exactly where he is." The doctor
murmured something sympathetic, and Mrs. Hilary continued, "I hope Texas
or Mexico, which ever it is, is a British possession. I always feel
safer about Hilary when he is under his own country's protection, for
one never knows what foreigners are going to do, there are such dreadful
stories in the papers nowadays." And she beamed upon the bewildered man
of science. "And then there's the climate, too, to be considered," she
went on; "some of these foreign places have their winter while we have
summer, or is it the other way round? I never know, it is so dreadfully
confusing, especially to me with my bad memory; perhaps it is that they
have summer while we have winter, but anyway I think the English
arrangement is much to be preferred. I am a good Conservative, you know;
besides, I think it is so charming to love one's own country, and all
that. By the way, about that letter.--Maudie darling," she called to her
daughter, "just go and fetch me daddy's last letter; it's the top one on
the left-hand side of where the papers are--not the bill side, darling,
but the other one. You'll find it at the back, under my handkerchief
sachet;