A dark curtain had been drawn across the window, and the dim glow of a cindery fire scarcely gave sufficient light to discern the different pieces of furniture.  Mr. Hamilton gave vent to a suppressed exclamation of impatience as he seized the poker, but I could not but notice the skilful and almost noiseless manner in which he manipulated the coals.  Then he looked round for a match, and lighted a candle on the mantelpiece, in spite of a peevish remonstrance from the patient.

‘You will make my head worse, doctor:  nothing but the dark eases it.’

‘Nonsense, Phoebe!  I know better than that,’ he returned cheerfully, and then he stepped up to the bed, and I followed him.  The woman who lay there was still young in years, she could not have been more than three- or four-and-thirty, but every semblance of youth was crushed out of her by some subtile and mysterious suffering; it might have been the face of a dead woman, only for the living eyes that looked at us.

The hopeless wistful look in those eyes gave me a singular shock.  I had never seen human eyes with the same expression; they seemed as though they were appealing against some awful destiny.  Once when Charlie and I were staying at Rutherford a beautiful spaniel belonging to Lesbia had been accidentally shot while straying in some wood.  The poor animal had dragged himself with pain and difficulty to the garden-gate, and there we found him.  I shall never forget the wistfulness of the poor creature’s eyes when his mistress knelt down and caressed him.  He died a few minutes afterwards, licking her hand.  I could not help thinking of Tito when I first saw Phoebe Locke; for the same unreasoning anguish seemed in the sick woman’s eyes.  A tormented soul looked out of them.

There was something rigid and uncompromising in the whole aspect of the sick-room; there was nothing to tone down and soften the harsh details of bodily suffering; everything was in spotless order; the sheets were white as the driven snow; a formidable phalanx of medicine-bottles stood on the small square table; there were no books, no pictures, no flowers; a sampler hung over the mantelpiece, that was all.  I saw Mr. Hamilton glance disapprovingly at the row of bottles.

‘I told Kitty to clear all that rubbish away,’ he said curtly.  ’Why do you not have something pleasanter to look at, Phoebe?—­some flowers, or a canary? you would find plenty of amusement in watching a canary.’

‘Birds are never still for a moment; they would drive me mad,’ returned Phoebe, in the hollow tones that seemed natural to her.  ’Flowers are better; but what have I to do with flowers?  Doctor,’ her voice rising into a shrill crescendo, ’you must give me something to send me to sleep, or I shall go mad.  I think, think, think, until my head is in a craze with pain and misery.’

‘Well, well, we will see about it,’ humouring her as though she were a child.  ’Will you not speak to this lady, Phoebe?  She has come down here to help us all,—­sick people, and unhappy people, and every one that wants help.’