‘Our dresses would tell you that,’ said the darker of the two.
‘But they would not tell me that you are married,’ answered the physician. ‘You have two children—a fair wife—and no friend.’
‘’Tis a lie!’ exclaimed the cavalier with the light hair.
The Physician and Mountebank
‘It is true,’ replied the necromancer coldly, directing the gaze of his piercing eye full upon him.
‘But our destiny, our destiny,’ said the dark officer with impatience.
‘You would care but little to know,’ returned the other, ‘if all should turn out as I here read it. I have said your wife is fair—a score and a half of years have robbed her of but little of her beauty; and I have said you have no friend. Now read your own fate.’
‘Come away,’ said the fair cavalier, trying to drag his friend by the arm from the platform. ‘We will hear no more—he is an impostor.’
As the soldier spoke a hectic patch of colour rose on the pale cheek of the physician, and his eye lighted up with a wild brightness. He raised his arm in an attitude of denunciation, and cried, with a loud but hollow voice: