'Oh! keep yourself easy about that,' he replied, smiling in turn. 'It won't go any higher, and if it does we shall know how to stop it.'
Lazare, who had come into the room after the Doctor's examination, listened to him trembling, burning to take him aside and question him, so that he might know the worst.
'Now, my dear Madame,' Doctor Cazenove resumed, 'don't worry yourself. I will come and have a little chat with you again to-morrow. Good-morning; I will write my prescription downstairs.'
When they got down, Pauline prevented the Doctor and Lazare from entering the dining-room, for in Chanteau's presence nothing more serious than ordinary lumbago had ever been mentioned. The girl had already put ink and paper on the table in the kitchen. And, noticing their impatient anxiety, Doctor Cazenove confessed that the case was a grave one; but he spoke in long and involved sentences, and avoided telling them anything definite.
'You mean that it is all over with her, eh?' Lazare cried at last, in a kind of irritation. 'It's the heart, isn't it?'
Pauline gave the Doctor a glance full of entreaty, which he understood.
'The heart? Well, I'm not quite so sure about that,' he replied. 'But, at any rate, even if we can't quite cure her, she may go on for a long time yet, with care.'
The young man shrugged his shoulders in the angry fashion of a child who is not to be taken in by fine stories. Then he exclaimed:
'And you never gave me any warning, Doctor, though you attended her quite recently! These dreadful diseases never come on all at once. Had you no idea of it?'