paying patients came she could subscribe towards the housekeeping.

It was just one of those arrangements that look so promising and plausible until fairly tried, but before many months had passed there was a hitch—something out of gear in the daily machinery.

It was a dry summer, and Brompton is not exactly a bracing place. Olivia began to flag a little, the long hours of teaching, the hurried walks to and fro, tried her vigorous young frame. The little maids who followed each other in quick succession were all equally inefficient and unreliable. Marcus began to complain that such ill-cooked, tasteless meals would in time impair their digestion. The Marthas and Annes and Sallies, who clumped heavily about the corner house, with smudges on their round faces and bare red arms, had never heard of the School of Cookery at South Kensington. Olivia, fagged and weary, looked ready to cry when she saw the blackened steak and unwholesome chips set before Marcus. Not one man in a thousand, she thought, would have borne it all so patiently.

Then one hot oppressive evening the climax came. Olivia, who had never fainted in her life, found herself to her great astonishment lying on the little couch by the open window with her face very wet, and Marcus looking at her with grave professional eyes.

That night he spoke very plainly. There must be no more teaching. Olivia was simply killing herself, and he refused to sanction such madness any longer. In future he must be the only breadwinner. Until patients were obliging enough to send for him, they must just live on their little capital. Olivia must stay at home, and see after things and take care of herself, or he would not answer for the consequences.

"You have your husband to consider," he said, in a masterful tone, but how absurdly boyish he looked, as he stood on the rug, tossing back a loose wave of fair hair from his forehead. People always thought Dr. Luttrell younger than he was in reality. He was eight-and-twenty, and Olivia was six years younger. She was rather taller than her husband, and had a slim erect figure. She had no claims to beauty; her features were too irregular, but her clear, honest eyes and sweet smile and a certain effective dimple redeemed her from plainness, and the soft brown hair waving naturally over the temples had a sunny gleam in it.

When baby Dot made her appearance—Dorothy Maud Luttrell, as she was inscribed in the register—the young parents forgot their anxieties for a time in their joy in watching their first-born.

Marcus left his books to devote himself to nursing his pale wife back to health. And as Olivia lay on the couch with her baby near her, and feasted on the delicacies that Aunt Madge's thoughtfulness had provided, or listened to Marcus as he read to her, it seemed to her, as though the cup of her blessing were full.

"Oh, Marcus, how happy we are!" she would whisper, and Marcus would stifle a sigh bravely.

"Oh, Marcus, how happy we are!"

Alas! he knew the little capital was dwindling sadly—rent and taxes, bread and cheese, and even the modest wages of a second Martha were draining his purse too heavily. He had plenty of poor patients, but no one but the French dressmaker had yet sent for the late Dr. Slade's partner. It was then that those careworn lines came to the young doctor's brow.

It was bitterly hard, for Marcus loved his profession, and had studied hard. The poor people whom he attended were devoted to him.

"He allus tells a body the truth," said old Widow Bates. "I do hate a fellow who truckles and minces his words like that Sparks. Do you suppose Jem Arkwright would have let his leg be cut off in that lamb-like manner if it had been Benjamin Sparks to do it?

"I was down at their place, and I heard when Dr. Luttrell said, 'Now, my man, you must just make up your mind, and be quick about it. Will you be a brave chap and part with this poor useless limb, or will you leave your poor wife to bring up six fatherless children? I am telling you the truth, Jem. If you will not consent to part with your leg, there is no chance for you.' Laws' sakes, you would have thought he was a grey-headed old fellow to hear him; it kind of made one jump to see his young, beardless face; but there, he was good to Jem Arkwright, that he was. Polly can't say enough for him. She fairly cries if one mentions his name.

"'I should have been Jem's widow but for Dr. Luttrell,' she said one day. 'Why, before he came in Jem was lying there vowing "that he had sooner die than part with his leg." It was the thought of the little uns that broke him. My Jem always had a feeling heart.'"

And other folks, although they had not Widow Bates's garrulous tongue, were ready enough to sing the doctor's praises.

When Dot was a year old and able to pull herself up by the help of her mother's hand, things were no better at the corner house. Olivia had even consulted her Aunt Madge about the advisability of sending Martha away and doing the work of the house herself.

"Martha is the best girl we have had yet," she said. "Marcus owned that yesterday. She is rough, but her ways are nicer than Anne's or Sally's, and she keeps herself clean; but then, Aunt Madge, she has such a good appetite, and one cannot stint growing girls."

"I should keep her a little longer," was Aunt Madge's reply to this. "It will only take the heart out of Marcus, knowing that you have to scrub and black-lead stoves, and he is discouraged enough already. When Dot is able to run about, you may be able to dispense with Martha's services," and Olivia returned a reluctant assent to this.

But her conscience was not quite satisfied. Even Aunt Madge, she thought, hardly knew how bad things really were.

Mrs. Broderick was a chronic invalid, and never went beyond the two rooms that made her little world. Most people would have considered it a dull, narrow life, and one hardly worth living; but the invalid would have contradicted this.

Madge Broderick had learned the secret of contentment; she had lived through great troubles—the loss of the husband she had idolised, and her only little child. Since then acute suffering that the doctors had been unable to relieve had wasted her strength. Nevertheless, there was a peaceful atmosphere in the sunshiny room, where she lay hour after hour reading and working with her faithful companion Zoe beside her.

Zoe was a beautiful brown-and-white spaniel, with eyes that were almost human in their soft beseechingness, and Mrs. Broderick often lamented that she could not eulogise his doggish virtues as Mrs. Browning had immortalised her Flush.

Olivia was devoted to her Aunt Madge; they had a mutual admiration for each other's character, and her sister's child was dear to Mrs. Broderick's heart, and perhaps the saddest hours she ever spent now were passed in thinking over the young couple's future.

"I was wrong," she would say to herself, with a painful contraction of the brow. "I said too little at the time to discourage their marriage; if I had been firm and reasoned with the child, she would have listened to me. Livy is always so manageable, but I was a romantic old goose! And then she was in love, poor dear! And now—oh, it breaks one's heart to see their young anxious faces! I know so well what Marcus feels; he is ready to go out into the roads and break stones if he can only keep a roof over his wife's head." And there were tears in Madge Broderick's eyes as she took up her work.

CHAPTER II.

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.

"I at least will do my duty."—Caesar.

Young Mrs. Luttrell stood at