It happened quite naturally that here, as in Guernsey, my share of the practice fell among the lower and least important class of patients.  Jack Senior had been on the field some years sooner, and he was London-born and London-bred.  All the surroundings of his life fitted him without a wrinkle.  He was at home everywhere, and would have counted the pulse of a duchess with as little emotion as that of a dairy-maid.  On the other hand, I could not accommodate myself altogether to haughty and aristocratic strangers—­though I am somewhat ante-dating later experiences, for during the winter our fashionable clients were all out of town, and our time comparatively unoccupied.  To be at ease anywhere, it was, at that time, essential to me to know something of the people with whom I was associating—­an insular trait, common to all those who are brought up in a contracted and isolated circle.

Besides this rustic embarrassment which hung like a clog about me out-of-doors, within-doors I missed wofully the dainty feminine ways I had been used to.  There was a trusty female servant, half cook, half house-keeper, who lived in the front-kitchen and superintended our household; but she was not at all the angel in the house whom I needed.  It was a well-appointed, handsome dwelling, but it was terribly gloomy.  The heavy, substantial leather chairs always remained undisturbed in level rows against the wall, and the crimson cloth upon the table was as bare as a billiard-table.  A thimble lying upon it, or fallen on the carpet and almost crushed by my careless tread, would have been as welcome a sight to me as a blade of grass or a spring of water in some sandy desert.  The sound of a light foot and rustling dress, and low, soft voice, would have been the sweetest music in my ears.  If a young fellow of eight-and-twenty, with an excellent appetite and in good health, could be said to pine, I was pining for the pretty, fondling woman’s ways which had quite vanished out of my life.

At times my thoughts dwelt upon my semi-engagement to Julia.  As soon as I could dethrone the image of Olivia from its pre-eminence in my heart, she was willing to welcome me back again—­a prodigal suitor, who had spent all his living in a far country.  We corresponded regularly and frequently, and Julia’s letters were always good, sensible, and affectionate.  If our marriage, and all the sequel to it, could have been conducted by epistles, nothing could have been more satisfactory.  But I felt a little doubtful about the termination of this Platonic friendship, with its half-betrothal.  It did not appear to me that Olivia’s image was fading in the slightest degree; no, though I knew her to be married, though I was ignorant where she was, though there was not the faintest hope within me that she would ever become mine.

During the quiet, solitary evenings, while Jack was away at some ball or concert, to which I had no heart to go, my thoughts were pretty equally divided between my lost mother and my lost Olivia—­lost in such different ways!  It would have grieved Julia in her very soul if she could have known how rarely, in comparison, I thought of her.