"My dear sir, you ask me rather a difficult question. Were I speaking of your daughter's recovery from the disease under which she has been labouring, I should say with the utmost candour that she has so far recovered as to be comparatively well. But I should not be discharging my professional duty--above all, I should not be worthy of that trust which you have reposed in my professional skill, and of the friendship with which you have been so good as to honour me--if I disguised from you that during my constant attendance on Miss Kilsyth, and during the examinations which I have from time to time made of her system, I have discovered that--that she has another point of weakness totally disconnected from that for which I have been treating her." He was looking straight into the old man's eyes as he said this--eyes which dropped at the utterance of the words, then raised themselves again, dull, heavy-lidded, with all the normal light and life extinguished in them. "I heard something of this from Muriel, from Lady Muriel, from my wife," muttered Kilsyth; "but I should like to know from you the exact meaning of your words. Don't be afraid of distressing me, Doctor," he added, after a short pause; "I have had in my time to listen to a sentence as hard--almost as hard"--his voice faltered here--"as any you could pronounce; and I have borne up against it with tolerable courage. So speak." "I have no hard, at least no absolute, sentence to pronounce, my dear sir; nothing that does not admit of much mitigation, properly taken and properly treated. Miss Kilsyth is not a hoyden, you know; not one of those buxom young women who, according to French notions, are to be found in every English family--" "No, no!" interrupted the old gentleman a little querulously. "On the contrary, Miss Kilsyth's frame is delicate, and her constitution not particularly strong. Indeed, in the course of my investigation during her recent illness, I discovered that her left lung was not quite so healthy as it might be." "Her lungs! Ah, good heavens! I always feared that would be the weak spot." "Are any of her family so predisposed?" "One brother died of rapid consumption." "Ay, indeed! Well, well, there's nothing of that kind to be apprehended here,--at least there are no urgent symptoms. But it is only due to you and to myself to tell you that the lungs are Miss Kilsyth's weak point, and that every care should be exercised to ward off the disease which at present, I am happy to say, is only looming in the distance." "And what should be the first step, Dr. Wilmot?" "Removal to a softer climate. You have a London house, I know; when do you generally make a move south?" "Lady Muriel and the children usually go south in October,--about five weeks from hence,--and I go down to an old friend in Yorkshire for a month's cover-shooting. But this is an exceptional year, and anything you advise shall be done."