een their wedding-day, she died, that he did not realize
in the least that he had reached his present age of forty-three without
having been really in love at all.

He was not unhappy. A studious man, cold, taciturn, and self-contained
as a rule, caring little for general society and devoted to his
profession, the want in his life, the blank in his wifeless and
childless home, was not to him what it would have been to a more
impulsive, less self-reliant nature. If sometimes he instituted an
involuntary comparison between his contracted hoped and interests as
contrasted with those of other men, books, his work, his studies, soon
consoled him. He hardly knew there was a yearning in his breast--a
vague, intangible felling, waiting for a mistress-hand to stir it into
activity--the hand of a woman whom he had never seen.

"And what brings you here a second time, Doctor?" asked Mrs. Leslie,
brightly, as she poured out a cup of tea and handed it to him. "Are you
going to give us some advice gratis?"

"Hardly, Mrs. Leslie; in fact, I want yours."

"Mine?" exclaimed the lady, vivaciously. "It is yours, of course--but
upon what subject?"

"This. You recollect that I told you my sister was coming home from
India with her children?"

"To be sure--I remember. Well?"

"Well, I have a letter from her announcing that, as she has been out of
health for the last month or two, her husband does not wish her to
travel yet. But her children are coming to England--they are on their
way, in fact, and coming to me."

Doctor Brudenell, in making this statement, did not feel comical, but
he looked so, in spite of his grave, refined, scholarly face, and Mrs.
Leslie greeted his words with a burst of hearty laughter.

"My dear Doctor, don't look so tragic! The poor little creatures won't
eat you. So they are coming to you? Well, what is your difficulty?"

"Merely, what am I to do with them?"

"Why, take care of them, of course!"

The Doctor stirred his tea with an air of helpless bewilderment. He
felt that this was all very well as far as it went, and strictly what
he meant to do, of course; but it did not go far enough--it was no
solution of his difficulty. He felt a distinct sense of injury, too.
His sister had got married, which was all very well. She had had eight
children, only three of whom were now alive; and it occurred to him
that, having the children, it was clearly Laura's duty to look after
them. There was en element of co