“I should be glad to know the amount of your fee, if you please,” Tavernake said.
“My fee is two guineas,” the doctor answered.
Tavernake paid him and he went away. Already the shadow of the tragedy was passing. The chemist had joined his assistant and was busy dispensing drugs behind his counter.
“You can go in to the young lady, if you like,” he remarked to Tavernake. “I dare say she'll feel better to have some one with her.”
Tavernake passed slowly into the inner room, closing the door behind him. He was scarcely prepared for so piteous a sight. The girl's face was white and drawn as she lay upon the couch to which they had lifted her. The fighting spirit was dead; she was in a state of absolute and complete collapse. She opened her eyes at his coning, but closed them again almost immediately—less, it seemed, from any consciousness of his presence than from sheer exhaustion.
“I am glad that you are better,” he whispered crossing the room to her side.
“Thank you,” she murmured almost inaudibly.
Tavernake stood looking down upon her, and his sense of perplexity increased. Stretched on the hard horsehair couch she seemed, indeed, pitifully thin and younger than her years. The scowl, which had passed from her face, had served in some measure as a disguise.
“We shall have to leave here in a few minutes,” he said, softly. “They will want to close the shop.”
“I am so sorry,” she faltered, “to have given you all this trouble. You must send me to a hospital or the workhouse—anywhere.”