IF we had been wise, we should have waited till my nurse could give us rooms under her roof. But we would not wait. And so it came to pass that we were married, one grey autumn morning, in St. George's Church, and took up our quarters among strangers. Lady Waterville was seriously angry. She even went so far as to say some cutting things that I could not easily forget. I parted with her coldly, and left the old house with a firm determination not to enter it again unless I was sent for. How sorrow came upon us in those dreary lodgings I have already told. Six months of mingled bliss and anxiety, and then my husband was stricken down. I sought for no help or sympathy from Lady Waterville in my trouble. Quite alone I watched by Ronald's sick-bed; and nurse was the only friend who visited us in our time of calamity. Yet not the only friend. There was one face that came like sunshine into the sickroom, one voice that never failed to bid me be of good cheer. The face was shrewd, bright, and kindly, with eyes that were well used to studying poor humanity, and the voice was deep-toned and pleasant to hear. Dr. Warstone was, in the truest sense of the word, a friend. He was not a courtly, flattering doctor by any means, sweetening his doses with little compliments. But he looked straight into your heart, and read all your doubts and fears, all your unspoken longings and womanly anguish; and he sympathised with every weakness as only a large-hearted man can. The clocks were striking eight, and I was just persuading Ronald not to sit up any longer, when the doctor paid us his first visit in Chapel Place. "This boy is fast getting well," he said, sitting by the patient's sofa, and criticising him quietly. "He seems to have got into good quarters; your new room looks like a home." My nurse had contrived to bring something of the country even into her London house. There were bulrushes on the walls that had grown by our old village stream, and the bunches of dried grass on the chimney-piece had been gathered in the fields behind my grandfather's cottage. There were no cheap modern ornaments to be seen; but we had put some quaint blue china on the shelf, and some more was visible through the glazed door of the corner cupboard. Up among the bulrushes hung a painted tambourine, decked with bows of bright satin ribbon; and between the windows was an oval mirror which had often reflected my grandmother's charms. Our decorations were simple enough; but they brightened the dim little room, and gave it that home-like look which the doctor had noticed at once. "I wish I could take Ronald out of town," I said. "Wait a bit," Doctor Warstone replied. "These spring days are as treacherous as usual. There isn't a lively view to be seen from your windows, but you must contrive to amuse him indoors."