"It certainly is most extraordinary how, when you smile, I find something so familiar in your face. The quick way you smile, reminds me of another face I have seen, but--I cannot remember where I saw it, or whose it is. And your voice reminds me of just such another clear voice, with restful cadences in it. Could I ever have known anyone belonging to your family?" Christina shook her head, recognising dimly that the woman before her, belonged to a circle of life very different from that in which her father and mother had moved. "I don't think it is at all likely you ever saw any relation of mine," she answered. "My name is Moore, and we were always very poor, and lived in an out-of-the-way Devonshire village. I never knew any of my relations, and I don't even know my mother's maiden name. I think her people had treated her very badly; she never mentioned them." "Ah, well, it must be some chance likeness, but it will worry me, until I can remember who the person is of whom you remind me. Is that the doctor?" she broke off to say, her lighter tone changing to one of acute anxiety. "What is he coming to tell me?" The animation that for a few moments had lighted her features, and lessened some of the tragedy, in her eyes died away, and the face that was turned towards Dr. Fergusson, as he once more entered the room, had nothing upon it but an agonised question. "He has allowed you to examine him thoroughly?" she asked. "Yes, quite thoroughly." Fergusson's voice was gentle, but very grave, and as he came and stood beside the bed, Christina instinctively realised that he hesitated to speak further, because what he had to say was of a painful nature. "Tell--me." Margaret spoke a little breathlessly; her eyes never left the kind, shrewd face looking down at her; the anguish in their depths hurt Denis's tender heart. To give pain to any woman, above all to a woman so fragile, so physically unfit to bear it as this woman seemed to be, was almost intolerable to him. Yet his honesty and strength of nature never allowed him to evade the truth, when truth had to be told, and he did not evade it now. "I am afraid I have not good news to bring you," he said. "The patient I have just examined, is only momentarily convalescent. I---think it is only fair to be quite honest with you: there is no real hope of his ultimate recovery." The woman in the bed uttered a little low sound, which seemed to Christina the most pitiful she had ever heard, but when she spoke, her voice was unnaturally quiet. "You mean he has some incurable disease? Tell me the exact truth." "Yes, quite incurable--and--very far advanced. I can give him a certain amount of alleviation, but--it would not be right to let you build any hopes on the possibility of a cure. There is no such possibility."