"But it can't be forgiven, Sid Hinchford, if you hinder me making an effort to atone to you in my way." "With your purse?" was the cold reply. "No; with my respect for you--my regret for a friend whom I have lost." "A strange friend!" "And I have faith in this man. I remember a case similar to yours, which----" "Stop! in the name of mercy, Maurice--this cannot be borne at least. I am resigned to despair, but not to such a hope as yours. Let him come in, and laugh at you for your folly in bringing him hither." "Bario!" called Maurice. The lank man came into the parlour, set his hat on a chair, and looked at Sidney very intently. His vacuity of expression vanished, and a keen intelligence took its place. "Good morning, sir," he said, in fair English; "you are the blind gentleman Mr. Hinchford has requested me to see?" "The same, sir." "You are sure you're blind?" "Maurice, this man is a----" "Yes, very clever. You have heard of Dr. Bario--he has been resident in Paris some years now." "Ah!" said Sidney, listlessly. "There is a blindness that be not blindness, sir--that's my theory," said the Italian; "a something that comes suddenly like a blight--the off-spring of much excitement, very often." "Mine had been growing upon me for years--I was prepared for it by a man as skilful as yourself." "May I put to you his name." Sidney told him, and Dr. Bario gave his shoulders that odious French shrug which implies so much. Such is the jealousy of all professions--extending even to the disciples of the healing art. A never thinks much of B, if he be jumping at the same prize on the bay-tree--Dr. Bario had his weakness. "He might have mistaken the disease, and into this have half frightened you. People, odd mistakes do make at times--I myself have not been infallible." "Possibly not," said Sidney, drily. "In my youth of course," said the vain man, "when I listened a leetle too much to the opinions of others--it was once my way." Sidney thought the speaker had altered considerably since then, but kept his idea to himself. He was endeavouring to be cool, and uninfluenced by this man's remarks; but they had set his heart beating, and his temples painfully throbbing. He was a fool to feel unnerved at this; it was a false step of his cousin's, and had given him much pain--but Maurice had meant well, and he forgave him even then. "Do you mind turning just one piece more to the light?" asked the doctor. Sidney turned like an automaton. Maurice drew up the back parlour blind; the doctor bent over his patient, and there was a long silence--an anxious pause in the action of three lives, for the doctor's interest was as acute as the cousin's. "Well?" Maurice ejaculated at last, "There's a chance, I think." "A chance of sight!" cried Sidney; "do you mean that?--is it possible that you can give me hope of that--now?"