ly, common sense was a powerful tonic, morally and
physically, to all invalids whom she nursed. She had no tolerance for
any weakness which could be conquered. She had infinite tenderness for
all weakness which was inevitable; and her discriminations between the
two were always just. "I'd trust more to Mrs. Smailli's diagnosis of any
case than I would to my own," said Dr. Macgowan to his fellow-physicians
more than once. And, when they scoffed at the idea, he replied: "I do
not mean in the technicalities of specific disease, of course. The
recognition of those is a matter of specific training; but, in all those
respects, a physician's diagnosis may be faultless; and yet he be much
mistaken in regard to the true condition of the patient. In this finer,
subtler diagnosis of general conditions, especially of moral conditions,
Mrs. Smailli is worth more than all the doctors in Canada put together.
If she says a patient will get well, he always does, and _vice versa_.
She knows where the real possibility of recuperation lies, and detects
it often in patients I despair of."

XV.

And now this story must again pass over a period of ten years in the
history of Eben and Hetty Williams. During all these years, Hetty had
been working faithfully in St. Mary's; and Dr. Eben had been working
faithfully in Welbury. Hetty was now fifty-six years old. Her hair was
white, and clustered round her temples in a rim of snowy curls, peeping
out from under the close lace cap she always wore. But the snowy curls
were hardly less becoming than the golden brown ones had been. Her
cheeks were still pink, and her lips red. She looked far less old for
her age at fifty-six than she had looked ten years before.

Dr. Eben, on the other hand, had grown old fast. His work had not been
to him as complete and healthful occupation as Hetty's had been to her.
He had lived more within himself; and he had never ceased to sorrow. His
sorrow, being for one dead, was without hope; save that intangible hope
to which our faith so pathetically clings, of the remote and undefined
possibilities of eternity. Hetty's sorrow was full of hope, being
persuaded that all was well with those whom she did not see.

Dr. Eben loved no one warmly or with absorption. Hetty loved every
suffering one to whom she ministered. Dr. Eben had never ceased living
too much in the past. Hetty had learned to live almost wholly in the
present. Hetty had suffered, had suffered intens