“I’ll see her now,” he said.

Lord Rivercourt led the doctor back to his daughter, and left him with her.  There were some moments of chilling doubt and cold uncertainty, and then came a rush of warm feeling at the bidding of a shy glance from Lady Mary.  He bent over her and murmured he scarcely knew what, but he heard clearly and with a divine ecstasy a softly-whispered “Yes!” which thrilled in his heart for days and months afterwards, and then he turned to him her face, her beautiful face illumined with love, and kissed it:  between two who had been drawn together as they had, what words were needed, or what could poor words convey?

About an hour later he walked to Savile Row to dress and return for dinner.  He walked, because he felt surcharged with life.  He desired peace and goodwill among men; he pitied with all his soul the weary and the broken whom he met, and wondered with regret that men should get irremediably involved in the toils of their own misdeeds; he was profuse with coppers, and even small silver, to the wretched waifs of society who swept the crossings he had to take on his triumphant way; he would even have bestowed forgiveness on his greatest enemy if he had met him then;—­for the divine joy of love was singing in his heart and raising him to the serene and glorious empyrean of heroes and gods.  Oh matchless magic of the human heart, which confounds all the hypotheses of science, and flouts all its explanations!

It was that evening when he and Lady Mary sat in sweet converse that she said to him these words, which he hung for ever after about his heart—­

“Surely, never before did a man win a wife as you have won me!  You made me well by putting your own life into me; so what could I do but give you the life that was already your own!”

Thus day followed day on golden wings:  Lefevre in the morning occupied with the patients that thronged his consulting-room; in the afternoon dispensing healing, and, where healing was impossible, cheerfulness and courage, in his hospital wards; and in the evening finding inspiration and strength in the company of Lady Mary—­for her love was to him better than wine.  All who went to him in those days found him changed, and in a sense glorified.  He had always been considerate and kind; but the weakness, the folly, and the wickedness of poor human nature, which were often laid bare to his searching scrutiny, had frequently plunged him into a welter of despondency and shame, out of which he would cry, “Alas for God’s image!  Alas for the temple of the Holy Ghost!” But in those days it seemed as if disease and death appeared to him mere trivial accidents of life, with the result that no “case,” however bad, was sent away empty of hope.

Chapter VIII.

Strange Scenes in Curzon Street.