Ascott was eighteen, and just about to pass out of his caterpillar state as a doctor’s apprentice-lad into the chrysalis condition of a medical student in London.  “But,” with sudden reflection, “I hope she won’t be in my way.  Don’t let her meddle with any of my books and things.”

“No; you need not be afraid.  I have put them all into your room.  I myself cleared your rubbish out of the box closet.”

“The box-closet!  Now, really, I can’t stand—­”

“She is to sleep in the box-closet; where else could she sleep?” said Hilary, resolutely, though inly quaking a little; for somehow, the merry, handsome, rather exacting lad bad acquired considerable influence in this household of women.  “You must put up with the loss of your ‘den.’  Ascott; it would be a great shame if you did not, for the sake of Aunt Johanna and the rest of us.”

“Um!” grumbled the boy, who, though he was not a bad fellow at heart, had a boy’s dislike to “putting up” with the slightest inconvenience.

“Well, it won’t last long.  I shall be off shortly.  What a jolly life I’ll have in London, Aunt Hilary!  I’ll see Mr. Lyon there too.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Hilary, briefly, returning to Dido and Æneas; humble and easy Latinity for a student of eighteen; but Ascott was not a brilliant boy, and, being apprenticed early, his education had been much neglected, till Mr. Lyon came as usher to the Stowbury grammar-school, and happening to meet and take an interest in him, taught him and his Aunt Hilary Latin, Greek, and mathematics together, of evenings.

I shall make no mysteries here.  Human nature is human nature all the world over.  A tale without love in it would be unnatural, unreal—­in fact, a simple lie; for there are no histories and no lives without love in them:  if there could be, Heaven pity and pardon them, for they would be mere abortions of humanity.

Thank Heaven, we, most of us, do not philosophize:  we only live.  We like one another, we hardly know why; we love one another, we still less know why.  If on the day she first saw—­in church it was—­Mr. Lyon’s grave, heavy-browed, somewhat severe face—­for he was a Scotsman, and his sharp, strong Scotch features did look “hard” beside the soft, rosy, well conditioned youth of Stowbury—­if on that Sunday any one had told Hilary Leaf that the face of this stranger was to be the one face of her life, stamped upon brain and heart, and soul with a vividness that no other impressions were strong enough to efface, and retained there with a tenacity that no vicissitudes of time, or place, or fortunes had power to alter, Hilary would—­yes, I think she would—­have quietly kept looking on.  She would have accepted her lot, such as it was, with its shine and shade, its joy and its anguish; it came to her without her seeking, as most of the solemn things in life do; and whatever it brought with it, it could have come from no other source than that from which all high, and holy, and pure loves ever must come—­the will and permission of god.