Something in the tone, the earnest look, struck on him with fear. "It cannot be!" he slowly whispered. "It is. I am dying, Francis. Dying slowly but surely. The probability is that I shall go before your mother goes." He remembered how worn and weary he had thought her looking for some time past; how especially so on this same morning when she stopped him at the door of the Cavendish. He recalled a sentence, a word, that had fallen from her now and then, seeming to imply that she saw the close of life drawing near. Yet still, with all this presenting itself to him in a sudden mental effort, he could only reiterate: "It cannot be; it cannot be!" "It is," she repeated. "I have suspected it for some time. I know it now." A lump seemed to rise in his throat. How truly he esteemed and valued this good lady he never quite realized until this morning. She resumed. "I know my friends, the few who consider they have a right to concern themselves about me, wonder that I should have come up to town so much more frequently during the past few months than I was wont to come. What I come for is to see my physician, Dr. Stair. I live too far off to expect him to come to me; and the journey does me no harm. I have an appointment with him tomorrow at eleven: after that, I return home." "Is it the heart?" he asked, drawing a deep breath. "No: but it is a disorder none the less fatal than some of those diseases that attack the heart. It is about two years ago--perhaps not quite so much," she broke off, "since I began to fear I was not well. I let it go on for a little time; Frost, our local doctor, did not seem to make much out of it; and then I came up to Dr. Stair. He is a straightforward man, and he plainly said he did not like my symptoms, but he thought he could subdue them and set me right. I grew better for a time; the malady seemed to have been checked, though it did not entirely leave me. Latterly it has returned with increased force; and--I know my fate." The disclosure brought to him the keenest pain. "If I could only avert it!" he cried out, in his sorrow; "if I could only ward it off you!" "No one on earth can do that. For myself, I am quite resigned; resting, and content to rest, in God's good hands." "And, how long----" "How long will it be before the end comes, you would ask," she said, for he did not conclude the sentence. "That I do not know. I mean to put the question to Dr. Stair tomorrow, and I am sure he will answer it to the best of his belief. It may be pretty near." "Do you suffer pain?" "Always; more or less. That will grow worse, I suppose, before it is over." "Alas! alas!" he mentally breathed. "Should not your friends be made acquainted with this, Miss Upton?"