s. "I shan't be so
anxious with a doctor on the spot, so to speak; and shall be ever so
much more of a wife," she promised, looking adorable in the ribbons and
laces of her snowy night-dress, backed with befrilled pillows.

The prospect had compensations, he felt, but he found it hard to explain
without incurring the imputation of selfishness, that, parted day after
day from the light of her presence, deprived of the sight of her
loveliness and the natural expression of his passion for her, he would
assuredly ache unceasingly and pine himself sick. She would not
understand, since she had little comprehension of the ways of mankind,
so he could only sigh and capitulate.

"At least there will be many honeymoons!" he allowed, trying to hide his
disappointment in satire.

"What a man you are!" she laughed. "Won't you ever get used to being
married?"

Meredith returned to his files and the clamouring multitude under the
trees, for the remainder of the afternoon, with the noxious odours of
bare-bodied humanity, besmeared with mustard oil, assaulting his
nostrils. Meanwhile Joyce cultivated the doctor with innocent feelers of
friendship while he administered afternoon tea.

"I do think you are such a clever nurse," she said flatteringly, while
he fed her on bread and butter. "You are like two persons in one--both
doctor and nurse!"

"Necessity is a good teacher," he returned shortly. "I have never nursed
any one myself; others have generally taken my orders."

"I should have imagined that you had done this all your life."

Viewed in broad daylight at close quarters, when her brain was cleared
of feverish delusions, he was not at all a handsome man. Too
blunt-featured and heavy in the jaws; too square in the frame and thick
of neck; but his eyes, with their power of reserve, were always a
splendid mystery; deep-set and provoking, yet suggestive of nothing so
much as banked fires, glowing and suppressed. Frequently they dwelt on
her with the same satirical amusement of the polo-field, and she would
waste much of her thoughts in wondering why. It was the look of a
sceptic who had no intention of expressing his unbelief, and Joyce was
irritated and annoyed. But she had no fault to find with his attentions,
and was invariably won to gratitude for services rendered.

She was very pretty--exceptionally so--and very simple; but, as pretty
women were never simple, Dalton found entertainment in the study of her
particular pos