The Box with Broken Seals | Page 5

charming face--a young woman in the early twenties, of little
more than medium height, with complexion inclined to be pale, deep
grey eyes, and a profusion of dark brown, almost copper-coloured hair.
She carried herself delightfully and her little smile of welcome was
wonderfully attractive, although her deportment and manner were a
little serious for her years.
"You wish to see me?" she asked. "I am Miss Beverley--Miss
Katharine Beverley." "Sometimes known as Sister Katharine," her
visitor remarked, with a smile.
"More often than by my own name," she assented. "Do you come from

the hospital?"
He shook his head and glanced behind her to be sure that the door was
closed.
"Please do not think that my coming means any trouble, Miss
Beverley," he said, "but if you look at me more closely you will
perhaps recognise me. You will perhaps remember--a promise."
He stepped a little forward from his position of obscurity to where the
strong afternoon sunlight found its subdued way through the Holland
blinds. The politely interrogative smile faded from her lips. She seemed
to pass through a moment of terror, a moment during which her
thoughts were numbed. She sank into the chair which her visitor
gravely held out for her, and by degrees she recovered her powers of
speech.
"Forgive me," she begged. "The name upon the card should have
warned me--but I had no idea--I was not expecting a visit from you."
"Naturally," he acquiesced smoothly, "and I beg you not to discompose
yourself. My visit bodes you no harm--neither you nor any one
belonging to you."
"I was foolish," she confessed. "I have been working overtime at the
hospital lately--we have sent so many of our nurses to France. My
nerves are not quite what they should be."
He bowed sympathetically. His tone and demeanour were alike
reassuring.
"I quite understand," he said. "Still, some day or other I suppose you
expected a visit from me?"
"In a way I certainly did," she admitted. "You must let me know
presently, please, exactly what I can do. Don't think because I was
startled to see you that I wish to repudiate my debt. I have never ceased
to be grateful to you for your wonderful behaviour on that ghastly

night."
"Please do not refer to it," he begged. "Your brother, I hope, is well?"
"He is well and doing famously," she replied. "I suppose you know that
he is in France?"
"In France?" he repeated. "No, I had not heard."
"He joined the Canadian Flying Corps," she went on, "and he got his
wings almost at once. He finds the life out there wonderful. I never
receive a letter from him," she concluded, her eyes growing very soft,
"that I do not feel a little thrill of gratitude to you."
He bowed.
"That is very pleasant," he murmured. "And now we come to the object
of my visit. Your surmise was correct. I have come to ask you to
redeem your word."
"And you find me not only ready but anxious to do so," she told him
earnestly. "If it is a matter--pardon me--of money, you have only to say
how much. If there is any other service you require, you have only to
name it."
"You make things easy for me," he acknowledged, "but may I add that
it is only what I expected. The service which I have come to claim from
you is one which is not capable of full explanation but which will cause
you little inconvenience and less hardship. You will find it, without
doubt, surprising, but I need not add that it will be entirely innocent in
its character."
"Then there seems to be very little left," she declared, smiling up at him
from the depths of her chair, "but to name it. I do wish you would sit
down, and are you quite sure that you won't have some tea or
something?"
He shook his head gravely and made no movement towards the chair

which she had indicated. For some reason or other, notwithstanding her
manifest encouragement, he seemed to wish to keep their interview on
a purely formal basis.
"Let me repeat," he continued, "that I shall offer you no comprehensive
explanations, because they would not be truthful, nor are they
altogether necessary. In Ward Number Fourteen of your hospital--you
have been so splendid a patroness that every one calls St. Agnes's your
hospital--a serious operation was performed to-day upon an
Englishman named Phillips."
"I remember hearing about it," she assented. "The man is, I understand,
very ill."
"He is so ill that he has but one wish left in life," Jocelyn Thew told her
gravely. "That wish is to die in England. Just as you are at the present
moment in my debt for a certain service