"On one point I must do Philip Cordery justice. He did not marry me for the sake of my fortune, which, indeed, was only a matter of a few hundreds of pounds left me by my mother's sister. Neither could he expect anything at my father's death, for the living of Long Dritton was a very poor one, and my father's purse was never shut against the claims of charity. It was a great blow to me when, within a couple of months of my marriage, my father died after a few days' illness; but when, eighteen months later, my other great trouble fell upon me, I no longer grieved that he had been taken. "My husband had hired a small furnished house at St. John's Wood, London, which stood in its own grounds and was surrounded by a high wall. Its position was a very secluded one, so much so that it could not be overlooked from any other house. Your father had never enlightened me in definite terms as to the nature of the business in which he was engaged, but I had a vague notion that he was connected, although in what capacity I was wholly ignorant, with some important firm in the City. Sometimes his duties took him from home for a week or ten days at a time. At other times there would be days when he never went beyond the precincts of his own garden. He had given me to understand that his great hobby was experimental chemistry, and he had fitted up a room on the top floor of the house as a laboratory where he often worked till far into the night, and the door of which, whether he was engaged there or not, was always kept locked. Considering the number of people whose acquaintance he had made in the shires, it seemed strange that he should know so few people in London, but so it was. He belonged to no club, we saw very little company, and he rarely took me anywhere except now and then to the theatre. Such callers as we had were all men, many of them being foreigners of different nationalities. I usually got away from them to my own room as soon as possible, and Philip seemed pleased that I should do so. "All this time, although many of my illusions had taken to themselves wings, I was by no means unhappy. Philip, while never demonstrative, was kind in his careless, easy-going fashion; in fact, I may say that I believe he was as fond of me as it was in his nature to be of anyone. And then, by-and-by, you were born, and life seemed to me a sweeter thing than it had ever been before.