It was to Dr.Merchison, and ran: "Come and see me at once, do not delay as I am dying .-- Jane." Within half an hour he was at her door.

Then she bade the nurse to throw a sheet over her, so that he might not see her features which were horribly disfigured, and to admit him.
"Listen," she said, speaking through the sheet, "I am dying of the smallpox, and I have sent for you to beg your pardon.

I know now that you were right and I was wrong, although it broke my heart to learn it." Then by slow degrees and in broken words she told him enough of what she had learned to enable him to guess the rest, never dreaming, poor child, of the use to which he would put his knowledge, being too ill indeed to consider the possibilities of a future in which she could have no part.
The rest of that scene has nothing to do with the world; it has nothing to do with me; it is a private matter between two people who are dead, Ernest Merchison and my daughter, Jane Therne.

Although my own beliefs are nebulous, and at times non-existent, this was not so in my daughter's case.

Nor was it so in the case of Ernest Merchison, who was a Scotchman, with strong religious views which, I understand, under these dreadful circumstances proved comfortable to both of them.