A few months back his father's plans had seemed of no consequence to him whatever. Half jokingly Mr Elthorne had thrown him and Saxa Lydon together, and the bright, talkative girl, with her love of out door life, had amused him. If he must marry, he thought it did not much matter to him who the lady might be, so long as she was not exacting and did not interfere with his studies. Saxa Lydon was not likely to want him to take her into society. She was too fond of her horses and dogs, and if it pleased his father, why, it would please him. But then came the appointment of Nurse Elisia to Sir Denton's ward, and by degrees a complete change had come over the spirit of his dream. At first he had hardly noticed her save that she was a tall, graceful woman, with a sweet, calm, saddened countenance which he felt would be sympathetic to the patients; and, soon after, half wonderingly he had noticed the intense devotion of this refined gentlewoman to the various cases. Nothing was too horrible, nothing too awful. The most sordid and repellent duties were unshrinkingly done, and in the darkest, most wearisome watches of the night she was always at her post, patient and wakeful, ready to tend, to humour, to relieve the poor sufferer whose good fortune it had been to have her aid. Then he had thought it no wonder that Sir Denton was loud in her praise, and a certain intimacy of a friendly nature had sprung up between them, during which he had soon discovered that their new nurse was no ordinary woman, but who or what she was he had no idea, and it seemed was not likely to know, for she never referred to her antecedents. After a time he had often found himself after some painful episode at a patient's bedside, wondering why Nurse Elisia was there. Everything about her betokened the lady, and no ordinary lady, and Neil unconsciously began building up romantic stories about her previous life, in most of which he painted her as a woman who had passed through some terrible ordeal, become disgusted with the world in which she had lived, and had determined to devote herself to the duty of assuaging the pangs of her suffering fellow-creatures. Once he had turned the conversation in her direction when dining with Sir Denton, but the old surgeon had quietly parried all inquiries, and at the same time let him see that he was touching on delicate ground in connection with one who was evidently his _protegee_. Naturally this increased the interest as time went on, and he found himself taking note of the bearing of the old man toward the nurse.