To Avery the suspense was well-nigh unbearable; but she dared not show the impatience that consumed her.  She had a feeling that in some fashion the great doctor was depending upon her self-control, her strength of mind; and she was determined that he should not find her wanting.

Yet, when she at length preceded him downstairs and into the little sitting-room she wondered if the hammering of her heart reached him, so tremendous were its strokes.  They seemed to her to be beating out a death-knell in her soul.

“You will tell me the simple truth, I know,” she said, and waited, straining to catch his words above the clamour.

He answered her instantly with the utmost quietness, the utmost kindness.

“Lady Evesham, your own heart has already told you the truth.”

She put out a quick hand, and he took it and held it firmly, sustainingly, while he went on.

“There is nothing whatever to be done.  Give her rest, that’s all; absolute rest.  She looks as if she has been worked beyond her strength.  Is that so?”

Avery nodded mutely.

“It must stop,” he said.  “She is in a very precarious state, and any exertion, mental or physical, is bound to hasten the end—­which cannot, in any case, be very far off.”

He released Avery’s hand and walked to the window, where he stood gazing out to sea with drawn brows.

“The disease is of a good many months’ standing,” he said.  “It has taken very firm hold.  Such a child as that should have been sheltered and cosseted, shielded from every hardship.  Even then—­very possibly—­this would have developed.  No one can say for certain.”

“Can you advise—­nothing?” said Avery in a voice that sounded oddly dull and emotionless even to herself.

“Nothing,” said Maxwell Wyndham.  “No medical science can help in a case like this.  Give her everything she wants, and give her rest!  That is all you can do for her now.”

Avery came and stood beside him.  The blow had fallen, but she had scarcely begun to feel its effects.  There was so much to be thought of first.

“Please be quite open with me!” she said.  “Tell me how long you think she will live!”

He turned slightly and looked at her.  “I can tell you what I think, Lady Evesham,” he said.  “But, remember, that does not bring the end any nearer.”

“I know,” she said.

She looked straight back at him with eyes unflinching, and after a moment’s thought he spoke.

“I think that—­given every care—­she may live through the summer, but I do not consider it likely.”

Avery’s face was very pale, but still she did not flinch.  “Will she suffer?” she asked.

He raised his brows at the question.  “My dear lady, she has suffered already far more than you have any idea of.  One lung is practically gone, wholly useless.  The other is rapidly going the same way.  She has probably suffered for a year or more, first lassitude, then shortness of breath, and pretty often actual pain.  Hasn’t she complained of these things?”