cunning, and that she was a past mistress in the art of reading men.

"Well," she said, after a minute of silence, "what do you make of it?"

She had a very attractive voice, not caressingly but carelessly
seductive; a voice that suggested a creature both warm and lazy, that
would, perhaps, leave many things to chance, but that might at a moment
grip closely, and retain, what chance threw in her way.

"Please tell me your symptoms," the Doctor replied.

"But you tell me first--do I look ill?"

She fixed her eyes steadily upon him.

"What is the real reason why this woman has come to me?"

The thought flashed through the Doctor's mind as his eyes met hers, and
he seemed to divine some strange under-reason lurking far down in her
shrewd mind, almost to catch a glimpse of it ere it sank away into
complete obscurity.

"Certain diseases," he said slowly, "stamp themselves unmistakably upon
the faces of those who are suffering from them."

"Is any one of them stamped upon mine?"

"No."

She moved, as if settling herself more comfortably in her chair.