“There is no reason why he should not. But where is this scratch of yours? Let me see it.”
“It is a nothing, doctor,—a mere nothing. Pray take no trouble about it.”
“But I must I have pledged myself to examine your wound; and I must keep my word.”
“Surely these gentlemen are scarcely so very anxious about me,” said I, in some pique. “Not one of them vouchsafed to see me safe home, though I had lost some blood, and felt very faint!”
“I did not say it was these gentlemen sent me here,” said he, dryly.
“Then who else knew anything about this business?”
“If you must know, then,” said he, “it is the English Countess who is staying here, and whom I have been attending for the last week. How she came to hear of this affair I cannot tell you, for I know it is a secret to the rest of the house; but she made me promise to come and see you, and if there was nothing in your wound to forbid it, to bring you over to her dressing-room, and present you to her. And now let me look at the injury.”
I took off my coat, and, baring my arm, displayed a very ugly thrust, which, entering above the wrist, came out between the two bones of the arm.
“Now I call this the worst of the two,” said he, examining it “Does it give you much pain?”
“Some uneasiness; nothing more. When may I see the Countess?” asked I; for an intense curiosity to meet her had now possessed me.