“I know that,” she answered, growing grave.  “I ought to know it.  I am a nurse already at St. George’s Hospital.”

“You are a nurse!  And at St. George’s!  Yet you want to change to Nathaniel’s?  Why?  St. George’s is in a much nicer part of London, and the patients there come on an average from a much better class than ours in Smithfield.”

“I know that too; but . . .  Sebastian is at St. Nathaniel’s—­and I want to be near Sebastian.”

“Professor Sebastian!” I cried, my face lighting up with a gleam of enthusiasm at our great teacher’s name.  “Ah, if it is to be under Sebastian that you, desire, I can see you mean business.  I know now you are in earnest.”

“In earnest?” she echoed, that strange deeper shade coming over her face as she spoke, while her tone altered.  “Yes, I think I am in earnest!  It is my object in life to be near Sebastian—­to watch him and observe him.  I mean to succeed. . . .  But I have given you my confidence, perhaps too hastily, and I must implore you not to mention my wish to him.”

“You may trust me implicitly,” I answered.

“Oh, yes; I saw that,” she put in, with a quick gesture.  “Of course, I saw by your face you were a man of honour—­a man one could trust or I would not have spoken to you.  But—­you promise me?”

“I promise you,” I replied, naturally flattered.  She was delicately pretty, and her quaint, oracular air, so incongruous with the dainty face and the fluffy brown hair, piqued me not a little.  That special mysterious commodity of charm seemed to pervade all she did and said.  So I added:  “And I will mention to Sebastian that you wish for a nurse’s place at Nathaniel’s.  As you have had experience, and can be recommended, I suppose, by Le Geyt’s sister,” with whom she had come, “no doubt you can secure an early vacancy.”

“Thanks so much,” she answered, with that delicious smile.  It had an infantile simplicity about it which contrasted most piquantly with her prophetic manner.

“Only,” I went on, assuming a confidential tone, “you really must tell me why you said that just now about Hugo Le Geyt.  Recollect, your Delphian utterances have gravely astonished and disquieted me.  Hugo is one of my oldest and dearest friends; and I want to know why you have formed this sudden bad opinion of him.”

“Not of him, but of her,” she answered, to my surprise, taking a small Norwegian dagger from the what-not and playing with it to distract attention.

“Come, come, now,” I cried, drawing back.  “You are trying to mystify me.  This is deliberate seer-mongery.  You are presuming on your powers.  But I am not the sort of man to be caught by horoscopes.  I decline to believe it.”

She turned on me with a meaning glance.  Those truthful eyes fixed me.  “I am going from here straight to my hospital,” she murmured, with a quiet air of knowledge—­talking, I mean to say, like one who really knows.  “This room is not the place to discuss this matter, is it?  If you will walk back to St. George’s with me, I think I can make you see and feel that I am speaking, not at haphazard, but from observation and experience.”