why renew a useless discussion? He persuaded himself that he had left
himself no time, and should miss the train, and hastened off to the
station, where he had to wait a quarter of an hour, consoling himself
with reflecting--

'After all, though I might have gone to him, it would have been useless.
He is obstinate, and occasions of irritating his unfortunate temper are
above all to be avoided.'

One short year after, what would not Philip have given for that quarter
of an hour!

By six o'clock he was at St. Mildred's, greeted with delight by his
sister, and with cordiality by Dr. Henley. They were both proud of him,
and every tender feeling his sister had was for Philip, her pet, and
her pupil in his childhood, and her most valued companion and counsellor
through her early womanhood.

She had a picked dinner-party to meet him, for she knew the doctor's
conversation was not exactly the thing to entertain him through a whole
evening, and the guests might well think they had never seen a handsomer
or more clever brother and sister than Mrs. Henley and Captain Morville.
The old county families, if they did wonder at her marriage, were always
glad to meet her brother, and it was a great pleasure to him to see old
friends.

Only once did his sister, in the course of the evening, make him feel
the difference of their sentiments, and that was about Miss Wellwood.
Philip defended her warmly; and when he heard that there was a plan
getting up for excluding her from the hospital, he expressed strong
disapprobation at the time; and after the guests were gone, spoke upon
the subject with his sister and her husband. The doctor entered into no
party questions, and had only been stirred up to the opposition by his
wife; he owned that the Miss Wellwoods had done a great deal of good,
and made the nurses do their duty better than he had ever known, and
was quite ready to withdraw his opposition. Mrs. Henley argued about
opinions, but Philip was a match for her in her own line; and the end
of it was, that though she would not allow herself to be convinced,
and shook her head at her brother's way of thinking, he knew he had
prevailed, and that Miss Wellwood would be unmolested.

There was not another person in the world to whom Margaret would have
yielded; and it served to restore him to the sense of universal dominion
which had been a little shaken by his conversation with Guy.

'Sir Guy was a great deal with the Wellwoods,' said