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 sitting up; that Dr. Kennedy, tall and unaltered, with the same light in his eye, even the same dreadful country suit, lounged in and sat on the chair by my side. Ella went away when he came in, she always had an idea that patients like to see their doctors alone. She flirts with hers, I think. She is incurably flirtatious in her leisure hours.

"You've had a bad time," he said abruptly.

"You didn't try to make it any better," I answered weakly.

"Oh! I! I was dismissed. Your sister turned me out. She said I hadn't recognised how ill you were. I told her she was quite right. I didn't tell her how often you had refused to see me."

"Did you know how ill I was?"

"I'm not sure." He smiled, and so did I.

"Were you so ill?"

"I know now what Margaret Capel felt about Dr. Lansdowne."

"He is a very able fellow. And you've had Felton, Shorter, Lawson."

"Don't remind me."

"Anyway you are getting better now."

"Am I? I am so hideously weak."

"Not beginning to write again yet! You see, I know all about you now. I've taken a course of your novels."

"Thinking all the time how much better Margaret Capel wrote?"