E-text prepared by Joyce McDonald, Christine Bell, and Marc D'Hooghe (http:www.girlebooks.com & http://www.freeliterature.org) THE DOCTOR'S WIFE A Novel By the Author of "Lady Audley's Secret," "Aurora Floyd" Etc. Etc. Etc. London John and Robert Maxwell Milton House, Shoe Lane, Fleet Street CONTENTS. I. A young man from the country II. A sensation author III. Isabel IV. The end of George Gilbert's holiday V. George at home VI. Too much alone VII. On the bridge VIII. About poor Joe Tillet's young wife IX. Miss Sleaford's engagement X. A bad beginning XI. "She only said, 'my life is weary!'" XII. Something like a birthday XIII. "Oh, my cousin, shallow-hearted!" XIV. Under Lord Thurston's oak XV. Roland says, "Amen" XVI. Mr. Lansdell relates an adventure XVII. The first warning XVIII. The second warning XIX. What might have been! XX. "Oceans should divide us!" XXI. "Once more the gate behind me falls" XXII. "My love's a noble madness" XXIII. A little cloud XXIV. Lady Gwendoline does her duty XXV. "For love himself took part against himself" XXVI. A popular preacher XXVII. "And now I live, and now my life is done!" XXVIII. Trying to be good. XXIX. The first whisper of the storm XXX. The beginning of a great change XXXI. Fifty pounds XXXII. "I'll not believe but Desdemona's honest" XXXIII. Keeping a promise XXXIV. Retrospective XXXV. "'Twere best at once to sink to peace" XXXVI. Between two worlds XXXVII. "If any calm, a calm despair" THE DOCTORS WIFE. CHAPTER I. A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY There were two surgeons in the little town of Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, in pretty pastoral Midlandshire,--Mr. Pawlkatt, who lived in a big, new, brazen-faced house in the middle of the queer old High Street; and John Gilbert, the parish doctor, who lived in his own house on the outskirts of Graybridge, and worked very hard for a smaller income than that which the stylish Mr. Pawlkatt derived from his aristocratic patients. John Gilbert was an elderly man, with a young son. He had married late in life, and his wife had died very soon after the birth of this son. It was for this reason, most likely, that the surgeon loved his child as children are rarely loved by their fathers--with an earnest, over-anxious devotion, which from the very first had been something womanly in its character, and which grew with the child's growth. Mr. Gilbert's mind was narrowed by the circle in which he lived. He had inherited his own patients and the parish patients from his father, who had been a surgeon before him, and who had lived in the same house, with the same red lamp over the little old-fashioned surgery-door, for eight-and-forty years, and had died, leaving the house, the practice, and the red lamp to his son.