I persisted. Sir Roderick’s town house had been sold to pay off some mortgages on the Pinewood. So I saw my good friend Dr. Hildyard about a house. After discussion, he offered me a floor in his house (which he only used for business, having taken a country house near Finchley as his place of residence). “By-and-by we may take it into our heads to be partners, Paull,” he said. “Then you will be on the premises.” It was a brilliant prospect, and my poor girl rejoiced with me. In theory, it was delightful; in practice, impossible. Day by day I would return to find the spectre of a wife, instead of the living, breathing entity I had married. I soon found out that although Lilia occupied each hour according to a plan we had drawn up together; although she managed her household cleverly, visited her people, taught in the school, and studied chemistry and physiology, as she wished, as she termed it, to be able at any moment to help me in minor matters if called upon, she seemed to _rust_, as it were, working and living alone. At first I thought it was loneliness, and Daisy came and spent the last days of her single life with us, Herbert Pym coming occasionally. (An abominable prig, that!) But after a few weeks, my sister came to me with a serious face. “I must speak to you, Hugh,” she said, with an evident struggle; “Herbert said it was my duty. My dear boy, do you _know_ about Lilia?” “Know?” I repeated, slightly nettled by Mr. Herbert’s Jack-in-office-ship. “Of course I know everything my wife says and does. I almost flatter myself she tells me her secret thoughts.” “That is just _it_,” said my sister, who seemed quite unlike her usual bright self. “We cannot help seeing, Hugh, that if this sort of thing goes on, Lilia will ruin your life.” “And pray why do _we_ think so?” I asked. “If you were to see her when you are away! She does what she sets herself to do. But in such a way! As soon as you are gone, she changes. She gets pale, and a sort of film comes over her eyes. She doesn’t really seem to understand what one says to her; and I can see that the poor people we go to see are beginning to think that you beat her, or something. The other day, old Dame Ashwell (that wonderful old woman who lives in the thatched cottage at the end of Swain’s Lane) looked quite disgustedly at me, and when she condescended to speak to me, was very dignified indeed; and yesterday, when I met her in the wood picking up fir-cones and determined to have it out with her, I found out that not only she but most of your people are noticing how miserable Lilia looks, and how different she was when the ‘old gentleman was alive,’ as they call it.”