“It is the doctor, my lady,” the servant said, approaching the motionless, recumbent figure of her mistress. Lady Cranstoun uttered a low exclamation of impatience. “Of what use is a doctor to me?” she murmured. “Send him away, Margaret! What good have they done me yet?” “But this is a new doctor, my lady. If you would only let him see you.” The nurse rose at this point and added her entreaties to those of the old servant, before crossing the room to where the doctor stood. “Lady Cranstoun lies like that hour after hour,” she whispered. “She neither eats nor sleeps, and she can hardly bear to be spoken to.” Dr. Netherbridge came quietly forward, and placing himself between the oak settle and the fire, looked directly into Lady Cranstoun’s face. The invalid, raising her hollow eyes, perceived a small, slight man of about thirty, with a pale face, a dark mustache and beard, and singularly penetrating and reliable dark blue eyes. He on his part beheld a tall young woman of apparently not more than twenty years of age, and of truly remarkable beauty, even though her face and arms were now slender to emaciation, and her pallor was almost corpselike. Her face was small, her features were delicate, and her hair, of which she possessed a wavy abundance, was the blackest he had ever seen. But her beauty and her fragility, both of which were strongly apparent, were forgotten by the doctor in the effect produced upon him by her eyes, surely the largest, darkest, and most hopelessly sad in expression that ever gazed out of a despairing woman’s face. Almost mechanically he raised her wrist, and began to feel her quick, feverish pulse. Her hand was extremely cold, although her dry, red lips looked hot and parched. A strong sympathy for her filled his mind as he drew a chair up to the oak settle, and began asking her some questions concerning her illness. At first she answered in monosyllables and evidently at random, staring into the fire, and speaking in a scarcely audible voice. Gradually, however, she took to watching his face, and at last, sitting up with some show of energy, she asked the nurse to wait in the adjoining room while she described her symptoms to the doctor. “Seeing you sitting there fidgets me,” she said. “I can’t collect my thoughts.” She spoke English correctly enough, in a sweet, rich voice, yet something in her manner struck the doctor as rough and unusual in a woman of birth and breeding. As soon as the nurse had moved away, Lady Cranstoun turned impulsively to the dark-complexioned servant. “Go after her, and prevent her from listening,” she whispered, rapidly, and the woman obeyed. “Now draw your chair close up,” she said, imperiously, to the doctor. “I have a great deal to say. There is something about your face which makes me think I can trust you. And I do so badly need some one to trust. Stay, though; do you know Sir Philip Cranstoun?” “I have never seen him in my life.”