Having deposited his burden with the blacksmith, and promised to call for it, he asked the way to the doctor's house, and found himself obliged to run nearly a mile. A smart motor was at the door when he arrived, and the maid said the doctor was seeing a patient, but would speak to him when disengaged. The minutes seemed hours to Felix as he sat in the hall, filled with a vast and overwhelming depression. It was of no use to struggle against his destiny. Rona, the sole thing for which he was making this last stand, was going to die. The door opened, the doctor came out, and advanced across the hall, accompanied by an elderly lady with a plain, humorous face, and a natural charm of manner. "Well," she said, "that is reassuring, doctor. But mind, nothing is to be spared. Let the poor fellow have port wine or tonic, or anything he ought to have, and send in the bills to me." "You are splendid!" was the reply, in a tone of deep feeling. "What would happen without you, I wonder? Hullo, my good man, what can I do for you?" He spoke to Felix, who could not immediately reply. He was seized with a fit of trembling, and grew white. He had seen the lady from time to time in his boyish days. She was only sister to his father's first wife--her name was Miss Rawson. She lived at Normansgrave, and kept house for Denzil Vanston. CHAPTER V SEPARATION I loved and love you--here is simple speech; I loved and love you, who are out of reach. --WILLIAM WATSON. For a minute or two the possibility that Denzil's aunt might recognize him rose up and flooded out everything else in the mind of Felix. That would be the culminating point of shame. Yet, as he thought it over, he felt nearly certain that she could not. She had not seen him since he was a Rugby boy. He was changed out of all knowledge, and he had never been considered like his father, so there would be no family likeness to guide her. And then there was the safeguard of his disreputable appearance. Choking down his nervousness, and by a great effort avoiding looking at Miss Rawson, he mumbled out, with as thick a Cockney accent as he could assume, the fact that his sister was ill aboard a canal boat at the wharf. She had had an accident cleaning "winders." She fell out over the rail of a balcony. He faltered out his story, aware of very formidable gaps in it, should he be called upon to substantiate it. But if the doctor was to help the suffering child he must know what had happened to her. The pickle-factory story and the anæmia were no good here, though they had served the _George Barnes_. He added the fact that they had no money. Felix became aware that Miss Rawson was looking at him with her kind face charged with pity. She laid her hand upon the arm of the doctor. "Here is my motor," said she; "jump in. What do you say is the name of the barge? The _Sarah Dawkes_? Yes, thank you, you will follow on foot, will you not?"