She treated her new tie as a purely nominal one, appeared careless and fancy-free; but she meant to go through with her bargain all the same, and a date in December had been actually fixed for the wedding, when the Professor with his usual inconvenience, fell ill. Gay always declared that the trouble began with his discovery of a wonderful new microbe, that after due blazonment in the medical press, turned out to be something quite different to what it pretended to be, and, as she expressed it, sat up on its squirmy tail, making insulting faces at its non-discoverer. Frank took the matter so much to heart as to be at first hesitatingly ailing, then with considerably less hesitation, and as it entailed no effort, really ill for some time. Nature was exacting her toll for his unhealthy, sedentary life, with its late hours, and lack of exercise, and all the tenderness for which Gay in those days had no other outlet, expended itself on him. She was a most devoted nurse, but to Carlton it almost looked as if, like the little boys and old Sam Weller's coach, the Professor had done it "a-purpose," when he lingered so unconscionably long a time over his convalescence, and the beautiful house in Norfolk Street still lacked a mistress. It would be a cold, practical mistress, who never gave its master a kiss, or word of love, or welcome, and who as wife might reasonably be expected to be still more the "woman with no nonsense about her," that Gay evidently nowadays aspired to be. Some men like brilliant women, hard and bright, others prefer hearts warm and tender. Carlton was one of these last, for, as Lossie had divined, there was a great capacity for romantic love in the man. Sometimes when most starved for sympathy, for appreciation where he had the right to expect it, he remembered the hot flood of devotion, of passion, that Lossie had poured out on him, and shivered in the isolation to which Gay from the first had banished, and rigorously kept him. The heart makes its own decisions--Gay's had made hers in that passionate cry, "Come back, for I love you, Chris," and Carlton had thought that he knew better than her heart what was good for her, and reaped his reward in an automaton that talked, and smiled, and conducted itself with perfect grace and decorum, but that was not Gay. It was the other Gay he wanted--the girl so full of life, and charm, and sparkle--the girl who could give brave kisses, and love with the thoroughness she put into everything that she did, the delicious comrade, the trusty counsellor, the dear household fairy who had the knack of creating a home wherever she might be, and that he had not hitherto found. Well, he would not find it now--"for without hearts, there is no home"--and his town and country houses would be well ordered by a capable house-mistress, cold and uninterested, when the Professor, who seemed to be in no hurry, set her free to assume her duties as wife.