“C’est selon!” replied the doctor, with a shrug of the shoulders. “The haemorrhage is, as you say, slight; but the tendon is badly torn—and—he will carry the mark of this day with him to his grave. He will walk with a limp for the remainder of his life.”
And Fordham waking up just then to consciousness under the influence of the cordial which his second was administering, heard the words, and smiled grimly to himself.
“Poetic justice, with a vengeance!” he thought.
Chapter Thirty Four.
At the End of his Life.
Midway between Nyon and Rolle, the steamer Mont Blanc was shearing her arrowy course through the blue waters of Lake Léman, heading for the latter place.
Her decks were covered with passengers, mostly of French nationality—light-hearted, chattering, cheerful souls, talking volubly and all at once—talking the harder apparently in inverse ratio to the interest of the topic under consideration.
Right in the stern of the boat, beneath the upper deck, his back against the end of the saloon, sat a solitary Englishman. He was smoking a cigar and pretending to read, but it was patent to the most casual observer that the book before him occupied very little of his attention indeed, for he was gazing out upon the sapphire surface of the lake and its green and gold setting of engirdling mountains, with an expression of settled sadness upon his extremely attractive countenance, which had no business to be seen upon the face of one so young.