Mr.Hamilton gave vent to a suppressed exclamation of impatience as he seized the poker, but I could not but notice the skilful and almost noiseless manner in which he manipulated the coals.
Then he looked round for a match, and lighted a candle on the mantelpiece, in spite of a peevish remonstrance from the patient.
'You will make my head worse, doctor: nothing but the dark eases it.' 'Nonsense, Phoebe! I know better than that,' he returned cheerfully, and then he stepped up to the bed, and I followed him.

The woman who lay there was still young in years, she could not have been more than three- or four-and-thirty, but every semblance of youth was crushed out of her by some subtile and mysterious suffering; it might have been the face of a dead woman, only for the living eyes that looked at us.
The hopeless wistful look in those eyes gave me a singular shock.

I had never seen human eyes with the same expression; they seemed as though they were appealing against some awful destiny.

Once when Charlie and I were staying at Rutherford a beautiful spaniel belonging to Lesbia had been accidentally shot while straying in some wood.

The poor animal had dragged himself with pain and difficulty to the garden-gate, and there we found him.