.

"Well, I concluded you had your reasons for being 'Nurse Rosemary
Gray,' and it did not come within my province to question your
identity."

"Oh, you dear!" said Jane. "Was there ever anything so shrewd, and so
wise, and so bewilderingly far-seeing, standing on two legs on a
hearth-rug before! And when I remember how you said: 'So you have
arrived, Nurse Gray?' and all the while you might have been saying.
'How do you do, Miss Champion? And what brings you up here under
somebody else's name?"

"I might have so said," agreed Dr. Rob reflectively; "but praise be, I
did not."

"But tell me" said Jane "why let it out now?"

Dr. Rob laid his hand on her arm. "My dear, I am an old fellow, and all
my life I have made it my business to know, without being told. You
have been coming through a strain,--a prolonged period of strain,
sometimes harder, sometimes easier, but never quite relaxed,--a strain
such as few women could have borne. It was not only with him; you had
to keep it up towards us all. I knew, if it were to continue, you must
soon have the relief of some one with whom to share the secret,--some
one towards whom you could be yourself occasionally. And when I found
you had been writing to him here, sending the letter to be posted in
Cairo (how like a woman, to strain at a gnat, after swallowing such a
camel!), awaiting its return day after day, then obliged to read it to
him yourself, and take down his dictated answer, which I gathered from
your faces when I entered was his refusal of your request to come and
see him, well, it seemed to me about time you were made to realise that
you might as well confide in an old fellow who, in common with all the
men who knew you in South Africa, would gladly give his right hand for
the Honourable Jane."

Jane looked at him, her eyes full of gratitude. For the moment she
could not speak.

"But tell me, my dear," said Dr. Rob, "tell me, if you can: why does
the lad put from him so firmly that which, if indeed it might be his
for the asking, would mean for him so great, so wonderful, so
comforting a good?"

"Ah, doctor," said Jane, "thereby hangs a tale of sad mistrust and
mistake, and the mistrust and mistake, alas, were mine. Now, while you
see Margery, I will prepare for walking; and as we go through the wood
I will try to tell you the woeful thing which came between him and me
and placed our lives so far apart. Your wise advice will help me, and
your shrewd knowled