The f.m.c. did not say yes or no.
"Still,"--the doctor turned sideways in his chair, as was his wont, and, as he spoke, allowed the corners of his mouth to take that little satirical downward pull which his friends disliked, "I'll do my duty. I'll give Honoré the details as to diet; no physic; but my prescription to you is, Get up and get out. Never mind the risk of rough handling; they can but kill you, and you will die anyhow if you stay here." He rose. "I'll send you a chalybeate tonic; or--I will leave it at Frowenfeld's to-morrow morning, and you can call there and get it. It will give you an object for going out."
The two visitors presently said adieu and retired together. Reaching the bottom of the stairs in the carriage "corridor," they turned in a direction opposite to the entrance and took chairs in a cool nook of the paved court, at a small table where the hospitality of Clemence had placed glasses of lemonade.
"No," said the doctor, as they sat down, "there is, as yet, no incurable organic derangement; a little heart trouble easily removed; still your--your patient--"
"My half-brother," said Honoré.
"Your patient," said Doctor Keene, "is an emphatic 'yes' to the question the girls sometimes ask us doctors--Does love ever kill?' It will kill him soon, if you do not get him to rouse up. There is absolutely nothing the matter with him but his unrequited love."
"Fortunately, the most of us," said Honoré, with something of the doctor's smile, "do not love hard enough to be killed by it."
"Very few." The doctor paused, and his blue eyes, distended in reverie, gazed upon the glass which he was slowly turning around with his attenuated fingers as it stood on the board, while he added: "However, one may love as hopelessly and harder than that man upstairs, and yet not die."