It would never have occurred to anyone on seeing Margaret Parke for the first time, that she was born to be a wall-flower,--plainness, or at best insignificance of person, being demanded by the popular mind as an attribute necessary to acting in that capacity, whereas Margaret was five feet eight inches in height, with a straight swaying figure like a young birch tree, a head well set back upon her shoulders--as if the better to carry her masses of fair hair--an oval face, a straight nose, blue eyes so deeply set, and so shaded by long dark eyelashes, that they would have looked dark too, but for the sparkles of coloured light that came from them, an apple-blossom skin, and thirty-two sound teeth behind her ripe red lips. With all these disqualifications for the part, it was a wonder that she should ever have thought of playing it; and to do her justice, she never did,--but some have "greatness thrust upon them." Margaret's father, too, was a man of some consequence, having a reputation great in degree, though limited in extent. He was hardly known out of medical circles, but within them everyone had heard of Dr. Parke of Royalston. His great work on "Tissues," which afterwards established his fame on a secure basis, lay tucked away in manuscript, with all its illustrations, for want of funds to publish it; but even then there were rooms in every hospital in Europe into which a king could hardly have gained admittance, where Dr. Parke might have walked in at his pleasure. So brilliant had been "Sandy" Parke's career at college, and in the Medical School, that his classmates had believed him capable of anything; and when he married Margaret's mother, a beauty in a quiet way, both young people, though neither had any money, were thought to have done excellently well for themselves. Alas! they were too young. Dr. Parke's marriage spoiled his chances of going abroad to complete his medical education. When he launched on his profession, it was found that many men were his superiors in the art of getting a lucrative practice in a large city; and, at last, he was glad to settle down in a country town, where he had a forty-mile circuit, moderate gains, and still more moderate expenses. His passion was study, which he pursued unremittingly, though time was brief and subjects were scanty.