There was some tedious legal business to go through, for my mother’s small property, bringing in a hundred a year, came to me on her death.  I could not alienate it, but I wished Julia to receive the income as part payment of my father’s defalcations.  She would not listen to such a proposal, and she showed me that she had a shrewd notion of the true state of our finances.  They were in such a state that if I left Guernsey with my little income my father would positively find some difficulty in making both ends meet; the more so as I was becoming decidedly the favorite with our patients, who began to call him slightingly the “old doctor.”  No path opened up for me in any other direction.  It appeared as if I were to be bound to the place which was no longer a home to me.

I wrote to this effect to Jack Senior, who was urging my return to England.  I could not bring myself to believe that this dreary, monotonous routine of professional duties, of very little interest or importance, was all that life should offer to me.  Yet for the present my duty was plain.  There was no help for it.

I made some inquiries at the lodging-house in Vauvert Road, and learned that the person who had been in search of Olivia had left Guernsey about the time when I was so fully engrossed with my mother as to have but little thought for any one else.  Of Olivia there was neither trace nor tidings.  Tardif came up to see me whenever he crossed over from Sark, but he had no information to give to me.  The chances were that she was in London; but she was as much lost to me as if she had been lying beside my mother under the green turf of Foulon Cemetery.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH.

THE WIDOWER COMFORTED.

In this manner three months passed slowly away after my mother’s death.  Dr. Dobree, who was utterly inconsolable the first few weeks, fell into all his old maundering, philandering ways again, spending hours upon his toilet, and paying devoted attentions to every passable woman who came across his path.  My temper grew like touch-wood; the least spark would set it in a blaze.  I could not take such things in good part.

We had been at daggers-drawn for a day or two, he and I, when one morning I was astonished by the appearance of Julia in our consulting-room, soon after my father, having dressed himself elaborately, had quitted the house.  Julia’s face was ominous, the upper lip very straight, and a frown upon her brow.  I wondered what could be the matter, but I held my tongue.  My knowledge of Julia was intimate enough for me to hit upon the right moment for speech or silence—­a rare advantage.  It was the time to refrain from speaking.  Julia was no termagant—­simply a woman who had had her own way all her life, and was so sure it was the best way that she could not understand why other people should wish to have theirs.