Wade was watching Sebastian, watching him quietly, with those wistful,
earnest eyes, as a cat watches a mouse-hole; watching him with mute
inquiry, as if she expected each moment to see him do something
different from what the rest of us expected of him. Slowly I gathered
that Hilda Wade, in the most literal sense, had come to Nathaniel's, as
she herself expressed it, "to be near Sebastian."

Gentle and lovable as she was in every other aspect, towards Sebastian
she seemed like a lynx-eyed detective. She had some object in view,
I thought, almost as abstract as his own--some object to which, as I
judged, she was devoting her life quite as single-mindedly as Sebastian
himself had devoted his to the advancement of science.

"Why did she become a nurse at all?" I asked once of her friend, Mrs.
Mallet. "She has plenty of money, and seems well enough off to live
without working."

"Oh, dear, yes," Mrs. Mallet answered. "She is independent, quite; has
a tidy little income of her own--six or seven hundred a year--and she
could choose her own society. But she went in for this mission fad
early; she didn't intend to marry, she said; so she would like to have
some work to do in life. Girls suffer like that, nowadays. In her case,
the malady took the form of nursing."

"As a rule," I ventured to interpose, "when a pretty girl says she
doesn't intend to marry, her remark is premature. It only means--"

"Oh, yes, I know. Every girl says it; 'tis a stock property in the
popular masque of Maiden Modesty. But with Hilda it is different. And
the difference is--that Hilda means it!"