“Ah!” interrupted the doctor.
“Wrapping my coat about her to put out the flames,” continued Lauriston hastily, “I looked at her face, and was quite touched by its helpless, childlike expression of innocence.”
“And will it take my thirty years of extra experience to teach you that to hold a woman in your arms is not a judicial attitude?”
Lauriston was silent. Emboldened by the knowledge that the doctor did not even know his name, and was by no means likely to meet him again, he had allowed himself to talk more freely than he would otherwise have done to a stranger. In the ferment of emotions he was in, however, the older man’s drily cynical tone seemed to him satanic. He was by this time, therefore, quite as anxious to leave the doctor, as the latter could possibly be to get rid of him. He was raising his hat for a rather reserved and abrupt leave-taking, when Dr. Bannerman stopped him with a good-humoured touch on his arm.
“Now what have I done that you should give me my dismissal like that? Merely told you what your own good sense—for you’re a Scotchman I know by your accent, though it’s far enough from a canny Scot you’ve been to-night—will tell you in the morning. Set your affections on a blue-eyed lassie among the hills, or on a prim little English miss; she may not be quite so warm to you as a little southern baggage would be, but then she’ll be colder to other people, and that restores the balance to your advantage. Now, I shall probably never see you again, so we may as well part good friends; and for goodness’ ” (the doctor said something stronger than this) “for goodness’ sake think over my advice. It’s ten times better than any physic I ever prescribed.”
He held out his hand, which Lauriston shook warmly.
“Thank you, doctor. I’m not a Scotchman, though I was brought up among the heather. You’re right. Your prescription is a very good one, and I’ll take as much of the dose as—as I can swallow.”
And in a moment he was striding down the street.
When he woke up the next morning, George Lauriston felt like a small boy who has been well thrashed the night before and who, sleeping soundly after an exhausting burst of grief, can’t for the life of him remember, for the first moment, the nature of the load of affliction which still burdens his little soul. Had he had more champagne the night before than was strictly necessary to support existence? Or had he been plucked in an exam.?
The sight of his over-coat lying on a chair, with the lining blackened and burnt, recalled the adventures of the preceding evening. But they came back to his mind in a hazy sort of way, nothing very clear but that odd little figure in white, with the slender arms, and the long black eyes, and the chains and bracelets that jingled and glittered as she moved. It was an odd incident certainly, and not the least odd part of it was the seriousness with which the old doctor had warned him to have nothing more to do with the mysterious lady of the sandal-wood screens and skin-covered couch. Nothing was less likely than that he should: in cold blood and in the healthy and prosaic atmosphere of morning, Lauriston felt not the slightest wish to run possible melodramatic dangers in the endeavour to see again the beautiful little girl whose romantic surroundings had afforded him an hour’s excitement the night before. The burn she had so unluckily sustained through no fault of his, had been pronounced not serious; if he were to attempt even a civil call for inquiries, he would probably be ill received in the house as a person whose presence had already brought more harm than good.