"No one but Miss Hester Gould," the old nurse had answered, in reply to Robert Streightley\'s question; and he had never bestowed a thought upon the answer. What was Hester Gould to him, or he to Hester Gould? To the first section of this inquiry the present chapter will furnish a reply; to the second, time only; time, just then busy with the beginning of many complications in the life of a man whose career had been singularly even, uneventful, and interesting only so far as it had developed his abilities and the results of their employment.