“But he has come down again, vastly improved by your treatment; and without you he feels that he would be a dying man. Come, you cannot refuse.”
North held out for a time, and at last gave way, more from the desire of getting rid of his cousin and the patient than from any wish to repeat his advice.
“I’ll come this time,” he said; “but this visit must be final. There are hundreds of doctors who can advise the man better than I.”
“Doubtless,” said Cousin Thompson; “but that is not the point. There is not one in any of those hundreds in whom my poor friend will have the faith that he has in you.”
The argument was unanswerable.
“I will be down in a few minutes,” North said; and trying hard to master the nervous feeling which came over him, and wondering whether he could get through the interview without some absurd utterance, he drew aside the blind to accustom his eyes once more to the light.
It was some moments before he could face it, and then he looked despairingly at the wan, haggard face before him in the glass.
He shrank from it at first, but looked again and again, without the feeling of horror that had pervaded him before. His countenance was changed, and terribly wan and drawn; eyes and cheeks were sunken, so that the former seemed set in deep, cavernous holes; but as he gazed he did not seem to dread the sound of mocking laughter, or of some strange utterance which he could not control, and proceeded to make himself somewhat more presentable for those below.
“And they come to me for help,” he muttered, “who want it more than any man on earth.”
As he opened his door he frowned, for he caught sight of the old housekeeper hastily beating a retreat, and a shiver ran through him as he felt how he was watched.