Mary made no reply.
"Oh! how nice," gushed Susan. "It is so lonely to walk down all those dingy streets by oneself. It is a treat to have somebody with one, especially—" and the cunning beauty checked herself, and pretended to be embarrassed.
They talked on indifferent matters till they reached the gates of the hospital, through which Susan passed after affectionately kissing the younger woman, and a parting, "Good-bye, Mary, I'll see you to-morrow morning; good-bye, doctor."
"I am going to Praed Street," said the doctor. "That is in your direction I think. I am going to walk. It will do you good to walk too, Miss King, if you are not tired. Shall we go together? It will be a very great pleasure for me."
"Thank you, Dr. Duncan, I shall be very glad. I don't feel inclined to go in a stuffy omnibus on such a fine afternoon."
So they went together through the now gaslit streets, that were filled with that haze of the still November afternoon, which the true Londoner loves for the soft melancholy of it. It is all very well for us to abuse our London fogs; but there are fogs and fogs, and who would exchange that dreamy poetic indistinctness of effect, which Turner so well knew how to express on canvas, for all the hard clear outline of your Southern cities.
I remember once, in Buenos Ayres, seeing tears come to the eyes of an old Bohemian of Fleet Street, who had for years been dwelling in that city of pellucid atmosphere, when one winter evening a genuine English mistiness made its appearance for a while, reminding that home-sick exile of his dear dingy city of the far Northern island.
This was by no means the first time that the doctor had walked home with Mary. A mutual liking had for some time existed between them; but so far the keenest observer could not have detected, in a word or look of either, any signs of serious affection, if such existed. They were not a demonstrative couple, and did not carry their hearts on their sleeves as Sister Susan seemed to do.
The doctor would speak to her in a calm respectful way, paying only those attentions a well-bred man always pays to a young woman.
She, very much on her guard when with him, affected a manner that would have repulsed many less earnest admirers. She would be cold, curt almost to rudeness, and went so far as to assume, at times, a flippant cynicism, which she was far from feeling.