Chapter 3 - Page 2

patient's life but his own
reputation and future were at stake, was now shaken to
the soul by a mislaid book or a careless maid. He
remarked it himself, and knew the reason. "When Mary
was alive," he would say, "she stood between me and the
little troubles. I could brace myself for the big ones.
My girls are as good as girls can be, but who can know a
man as his wife knows him?" Then his memory would
conjure up a tuft of brown hair and a single white, thin
hand over a coverlet, and he would feel, as we have all
felt, that if we do not live and know each other after
death, then indeed we are tricked and betrayed by all the
highest hopes and subtlest intuitions of our nature.

The Doctor had his compensations to make up for his
loss. The great scales of Fate had been held on a level
for him; for where in all great London could one find two
sweeter girls, more loving, more intelligent, and more
sympathetic than Clara and Ida Walker? So bright were
they, so quick, so interested in all which interested
him, that if it were possible for a man to be compensated
for the loss of a good wife then Balthazar Walker might
claim to be so.

Clara was tall and thin and supple, with a graceful,
womanly figure. There was something stately and
distinguished in her carriage, "queenly" her friends
called her, while her critics described her as reserved
and distant.

Such as it was, however, it was part and parcel of
herself, for she was, and had always from her
childhood been, different from any one around her. There
was nothing gregarious in her nature. She thought with
her own mind, saw with her own eyes, acted from her own
impulse. Her face was pale, striking rather than pretty,
but with two great dark eyes, so earnestly questioning,
so quick in their transitions from joy to pathos, so
swift in their comment upon every word and deed around
her, that those eyes alone were to many more attractive
than all the beauty of her younger sister. Hers was a
strong, quiet soul, and it was her firm hand which had
taken over the duties of her mother, had ordered the
house, restrained the servants, comforted her father, and
upheld her weaker sister, from the day of that great
misfortune.

Ida Walker was a hand's breadth smaller than Clara,
but was a little fuller in the face and plumper in the
figure. She had light yellow hair, mischievous blue eyes
with the light of humor ever twinkling in their depths,
and a large, perfectly formed mouth, with that slight
upward curve of the corners which goes with a keen
appreciation of fun, suggesting even in repose that a
latent smile is ever lurking at the edges of the lips.
She was modern to the soles of her dainty