I did not rise. In those bad neuritis days rising was not easy. I stared at the intruder, and he at me. But I guessed in a minute to what his unwelcome presence was due. My anxious, dearly beloved, and fidgetty sister had found out the name of the most noted Æsculapius of the neighbourhood and had notified him of my arrival, probably had given him a misleading and completely erroneous account of my illness, certainly asked him to call. I found out afterwards I was right in all my guesses save one. This was not the most noted Æsculapius of the neighbourhood, but his more youthful partner. Dr. Lansdowne was on his holiday. Dr. Kennedy had read my sister’s letter and was now bent upon carrying out her instructions. As I said, we stared at each other in the advancing dusk. “You have only just come?” he ventured then. “I’ve been here about an hour,” I replied—“a quiet hour.” “I had your sister’s letter,” he said apologetically, if a little awkwardly, as he advanced into the room. “She wrote you, then?” “Oh yes! I’ve got the letter somewhere.” He felt in his pocket and failed to find it. “Won’t you sit down?” There was no chair near the writing-table save the one upon which I sat. A further reason why I knew my predecessor here had been a writer! Dr. Kennedy had to fetch one, and I took shallow stock of him meanwhile. A tall and not ill-looking man in the late thirties or early forties, he had on the worst suit of country tweeds I had ever seen and incongruously well-made boots. Now he sprawled silently in the selected chair, and I waited for his opening. Already I was nauseated with doctors and their methods. In town I had seen everybody’s favourite nostrum-dispenser, and none of them had relieved me of anything but my hardly earned cash. I mean to present a study of them one day, to get something back from what I have given. Dr. Kennedy did not accord with the black-coated London brigade, and his opening was certainly different. “How long have you been feeling unwell?” That was what I expected, this was the common gambit. Dr. Kennedy sat a few minutes without speaking at all. Then he asked me abruptly: “Did you know Mrs. Capel?” “Who?” “Margaret Capel. You knew she lived here, didn’t you? That it was here it all happened?” “What happened?” “Then you don’t know?” He got up from his chair in a fidgetty sort of way and went over to the other window. “I hoped you knew her, that she had been a friend of yours. I hoped so ever since I had your sister’s letter. Carbies! It seemed so strange to be coming here again. I can’t believe it is ten years ago; it is all so vivid!” He came back and sat down again. “I ought not to talk about her, but the whole room and house are so full of memories. She used to sit, just as you are sitting now, for hours at a time, dreaming. Sometimes she would not speak to me at all. I had to go away; I could see I was intruding.”