"He has allowed you to examine him thoroughly?" she asked.
"Yes, quite thoroughly." Fergusson's voice was gentle, but very grave, and as he came and stood beside the bed, Christina instinctively realised that he hesitated to speak further, because what he had to say was of a painful nature.
"Tell—me." Margaret spoke a little breathlessly; her eyes never left the kind, shrewd face looking down at her; the anguish in their depths hurt Denis's tender heart. To give pain to any woman, above all to a woman so fragile, so physically unfit to bear it as this woman seemed to be, was almost intolerable to him. Yet his honesty and strength of nature never allowed him to evade the truth, when truth had to be told, and he did not evade it now.
"I am afraid I have not good news to bring you," he said. "The patient I have just examined, is only momentarily convalescent. I—-think it is only fair to be quite honest with you: there is no real hope of his ultimate recovery." The woman in the bed uttered a little low sound, which seemed to Christina the most pitiful she had ever heard, but when she spoke, her voice was unnaturally quiet.
"You mean he has some incurable disease? Tell me the exact truth."
"Yes, quite incurable—and—very far advanced. I can give him a certain amount of alleviation, but—it would not be right to let you build any hopes on the possibility of a cure. There is no such possibility."
When the doctor's voice ceased, there was a strange, tense silence in the room for many minutes; and Christina, standing by the fireplace, felt as if she could almost see and hear the woman in the bed, gathering up her forces to meet this blow. Once the girl glanced at the white face and deep eyes, but she turned away her glance again, feeling it was not right that any other human being should gaze upon the tortured soul, that looked out of those eyes. Margaret herself first broke the silence.
"Will—it—be—long?" she asked.
"I think not," Fergusson answered gravely, "but in a case like this everything depends upon the temperament of the patient, his surroundings, his mental attitude. Anxiety, worry, any mental strain would accelerate matters."
The white hands that all this time had been so still on the coverlet, clasped themselves together, and there was a new note of passion in Margaret's voice, as she said—