of beard to when
shaven and spruce, as is their ordinary habit: while women, when
smartly dressed with fashionable hats and flimsy veils, are very
different to when, in illness, they lie with hair unbound, faces
pinched and eyes sunken, which is the only recollection their doctor
has of them. The duchess and the servant girl present very similar
figures when lying on a sick bed in a critical condition.

There was an element of romantic mystery in that fragile little figure
huddled up in the far corner of the carriage. Once or twice, when she
believed my gaze to be averted, she raised her eyes furtively as
though to reassure herself of my identity, and in her restless manner
I discerned a desire to speak with me. It was very probable that she
was some poor girl of the lady's maid or governess class to whom I had
shown attention during an illness. We have so many in the female wards
at Guy's.

But during that journey a further and much more important matter
recurred to me, eclipsing all thought of the sad-faced girl opposite.
I recollected those words I had overheard, and felt convinced that the
speaker had been none other than Ethelwynn herself.

Sometimes when a man's mind is firmly fixed upon an object the events
of his daily life curiously tend towards it. Have you never
experienced that strange phenomenon for which medical science has
never yet accounted, namely, the impression of form upon the
imagination? You have one day suddenly thought of a person long
absent. You have not seen him for years, when, without any apparent
cause, you have recollected him. In the hurry and bustle of city life
a thousand faces are passing you hourly. Like a flash one man passes,
and you turn to look, for the countenance bears a striking resemblance
to your absent friend. You are disappointed, for it is not the man. A
second face appears in the human phantasmagoria of the street, and the
similarity is almost startling. You are amazed that two persons should
pass so very like your friend. Then, an hour after, a third
face--actually that of your long-lost friend himself. All of us have
experienced similar vagaries of coincidence. How can we account for
them?

And so it was in my own case. So deeply had my mind been occupied by
thoughts of my love that several times that day, in London and in
Brighton, I had been startled by striking resemblances. Thus I
wondered whether that voice I had heard was actually hers, or only a
distorted