Socially the conditions had been favoured by her introduction. The position that she had occupied in Laburnum Lodge gave her a factitious value, and gained her the friendliness of the Matron, a functionary who has the power to make the hospital-nurse distinctly uncomfortable, and who has on occasion been known to use it. It commended her also to the other nurses, two of whom were gentlewomen, insomuch as it promised an agreeable variety to conversation in the sitting-room. She was by no means unconscious of the extent of her debt to Kincaid, and her gratitude as time went on increased rather than diminished. Certainly the environment was conducive to a perception of his merits--more conducive even than had been the period of his medical attendance at the villa. The king is nowhere so attractive as at his court; the preacher nowhere so impressive as in the pulpit. Ashore the captain may bore us, but we all like to smoke our cigars with him on his ship. The poorest pretender assumes importance in the circle of his adherents, and poses with authority on some small platform, if it be only his mother's hearthrug. Here where the doctor was the guiding spirit, and Mary found his praises on every tongue, the glow of gratitude was fanned by the breath of popularity. Had he deliberately planned a means of raising himself in her esteem, he could have devised none better than this of placing her in the miniature kingdom where he ruled. In remembering that he had wanted to marry her, she was sensible one day of a thrill of pride: nothing like regret, nothing like arrogance, but a momentary pride. She felt more dignity in the moment. If he remembered it too, however, no word that he spoke evinced such recollection. The promise that he had made to her had been kept to the letter, and the past was never alluded to between them. As doctor and nurse their colloquies were brief and practical. It was the demeanour that he adopted towards her from the day of her instatement that added the first fuel to her thankfulness; and if, withal, she was inclined to review his generosity rather than to regard it, it was because he had established the desired relations on so firm a footing that she had ceased to believe that the pursuance of it cost him any pains. That she had held his love after the story of her shame she was aware; but that on reflection he could still want her for his wife she did not for an instant suppose; and she often thought that by degrees his attitude had become the one most natural to him.