que of Maiden Modesty. But with Hilda it is different. And
the difference is--that Hilda means it!"

"You are right," I answered. "I believe she means it. Yet I know one man
at least--" for I admired her immensely.

Mrs. Mallet shook her head and smiled. "It is no use, Dr. Cumberledge,"
she answered. "Hilda will never marry. Never, that is to say, till she
has attained some mysterious object she seems to have in view, about
which she never speaks to anyone--not even to me. But I have somehow
guessed it!"

"And it is?"

"Oh, I have not guessed what it IS: I am no Oedipus. I have merely
guessed that it exists. But whatever it may be, Hilda's life is bounded
by it. She became a nurse to carry it out, I feel confident. From
the very beginning, I gather, a part of her scheme was to go to St.
Nathaniel's. She was always bothering us to give her introductions
to Dr. Sebastian; and when she met you at my brother Hugo's, it was a
preconcerted arrangement; she asked to sit next you, and meant to induce
you to use your influence on her behalf with the Professor. She was
dying to get there."

"It is very odd," I mused. "But there!--women are inexplicable!"

"And Hilda is in that matter the very quintessence of woman. Even I, who
have known her for years, don't pretend to understand her."

A few months later, Sebastian began his great researches on his new
anaesthetic. It was a wonderful set of researches. It promised so well.
All Nat's (as we familiarly and affectionately styled St. Nathaniel's)
was in a fever of excitement over the drug for a twelvemonth.

The Professor obtained his first hint of the new body by a mere
accident. His friend, the Deputy Prosector of the Zoological Society,
had mixed a draught for a sick raccoon at the Gardens, and, by some
mistake in a bottle, had mixed it wrongly. (I purposely refrain from
mentioning the ingredients, as they are drugs which can be easily
obtained in isolation at any chemist's, though when compounded they form
one of the most dangerous and difficult to detect of organic poisons.
I do not desire to play into the hands of would-be criminals.) The
compound on which the Deputy Prosector had thus accidentally lighted
sent the raccoon to sleep in the most extraordinary manner. Indeed, the
raccoon slept for thirty-six hours on end, all attempts to awake him, by
pulling his tail or tweaking his hair being quite unavailing. This was
a novelty in narcotics; so Sebastian was asked to