"You dear, brave woman!" he said. "But that shows you the truth of what I said. Be kind to your fine nerves and senses. Treat them well." She was quite quiet again now, and sat down in the chair from which she had jumped up. "Never mind me," she said. "I can manage my own affairs, and I promise you I will be as sensible as I find it possible. Oh yes, there are other worries. You are perfectly right." He paused a moment. "Now about this man in Caithness," he said. "He was there, I suppose, when Lord Thurso and Lady Maud were up during the typhoid. Now, I am not bigoted on the subject; I know quite well that these Christian Scientists have got hold of a big truth, but many of them mix such floods of nonsense up with it that it is quite dissolved. They tell me that if you have a compound fracture, and only say to yourself that compound fractures don't exist, the bones will join. That, of course, is silly. But where you deal with the will, or the nerves, or the imagination, it is a different sort of thing altogether." Lady Thurso got up again, quietly this time. "I will see if Maud is in," she said. "There was very virulent typhoid up there, you know, in the summer, and Mr. Cochrane is believed by her to have cured one or two extremely grave cases--in fact, she believes more than that." She rang the bell, and in the interval, before it was answered, only a couple of words passed. "And you will spare yourself?" said Sir James. Maud had come in half an hour ago, but hearing that her sister-in-law was with the doctor, she had not interrupted them. As she entered now, Catherine shook hands with Sir James. "Maud, this is Sir James Sanderson," she said. "He wants to talk to you. Good-bye, Sir James. I shall see you, of course, to-morrow morning." She left the room, and Maud was alone with the doctor. She had no idea what he wanted to talk to her about, and waited, wondering why Catherine had left them. But he instantly approached the subject. "Lady Maud," he said, "I want to hear about Caithness and the typhoid and Mr. Cochrane." Maud was taking off her gloves, but stopped in sheer surprise. There was nothing that she expected less than this. "What for?" she said. "For your brother," said he. He asked but few questions in her story, for it was a plain and simple narrative. She described just what had passed in connection with Duncan's wife; she described all that she had seen with regard to Sandie Mackenzie; she mentioned the curious and complete cessation of the epidemic itself. "And I think I believe exactly what Mr. Cochrane told me," she said. "Indeed, it seems the simplest explanation to suppose that it was the direct power of God, in whose presence neither sickness, nor disease, nor pain can exist." "You say you think so only," said he. "You are not sure?" "No, not quite." "But Mr. Cochrane is?" She smiled. "I should say it was the only thing he was absolutely sure of," she said.