“There is every kind of mental ailment, I am sorry to say, Girlie, and they can all be described to a fellow who has your welfare at heart more than his own.”
“Fever, Mark, I tell you,” he said with a frown. “Take out your watch and feel my pulse. It is fever, is it not? Malarial, do you think? or has the fashionable influenza travelled with us across the desert? I want a dose of quinine, I think.”
“You want a dose of confidence, Girlie,” I replied drily. “Your pulse is quick, your temperature is high; I can soon remedy that, if…”
“If what?” he asked abruptly, for I had paused, hesitating, strangely enough, for the first time in my life not daring to touch upon a point openly with Hugh.
“If you will tell me what you think of when you lie awake at night,” I said at last, looking straight and searchingly in his eyes.
“Mostly of what a confounded fool your friend Hugh Tankerville is, old chap,” he replied with a laugh.
“Is that all?”
“Yes! I think that is all. It embraces a very vast section of my life—its future. But I don’t know why you should put me to such rigorous catechism, Mark. I am ever so glad that you came, and it will do me more good than all the medicines in the world.”
“Nothing will do you good, Girlie,” I said earnestly, “except one thing.”
“What is that?”