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Sebastian.' Gentle and lovable as she was in every other aspect, towards Sebastian she seemed like a lynx-eyed detective. She had some object in view, I thought, almost as abstract as his own—some object to which, as I judged, she was devoting her life quite as single-mindedly as Sebastian himself had devoted his to the advancement of science.

'Why did she become a nurse at all?' I asked once of her friend, Mrs. Mallet. 'She has plenty of money, and seems well enough off to live without working.'

'Oh, dear, yes,' Mrs. Mallet answered. 'She is independent, quite; has a tidy little income of her own—six or seven hundred a year—and she could choose her own society. But she went in for this mission fad early; she didn't intend to marry, she said, so she would like to have some work to do in life. Girls suffer like that, nowadays. In her case, the malady took the form of nursing.'

'As a rule,' I ventured to interpose, 'when a pretty girl says she doesn't intend to marry, her remark is premature. It only means———'

'Oh yes, I know. Every girl says it; 'tis a stock property in the popular masque 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 any one—not even to me. But I have somehow guessed it.'

'And it is?'