"I should like a colleague from Blackwater to consult with me. Will you receive him?"
I said "Yes" on one condition—that if the new doctor had anything serious to say he should report it first to me.
A little reluctantly Martin's father agreed to my terms and the consulting physician was sent for. He came early the next day—a beautiful Ellan morning with a light breeze from the sea bringing the smell of new-mown hay from the meadows lying between.
He was an elderly man, and I could not help seeing a shadow cross his clean-shaven face the moment his eyes first fell on me. They were those tender but searching eyes which are so often seen in doctors, who are always walking through the Valley of the Shadow and seem to focus their gaze accordingly.
Controlling his expression, he came up to my bed and, taking the hand I held out to him, he said:
"I trust we'll not frighten you, my lady."
I liked that (though I cared nothing about my lost title, I thought it was nice of him to remember it), and said I hoped I should not be too restless.
While he took out and fixed his stethoscope (he had such beautiful soft hands) he told me that he had had a daughter of my own age once.
"Once? Where is she now?" I asked him.
"In the Kingdom. She died like a Saint," he answered.