"Well, old boy!" he said to himself cynically, as he walked back to Carlton Lodge, "are we going to write our 'Sorrows of Werther' once again?"
CHAPTER LI.
ANOTHER CHAT BY THE FIRE.
The last sodden leaves had fallen from the London trees, and autumn was fast merging into winter. Mona sat alone in her study, deep in a copy of Balfour On the Heart, which she had picked up second-hand, on her way from hospital, and had carried home in triumph. It was the height of her ambition at this time to be "strong on the heart and lungs"; and as she read she mechanically percussed the arm of her big chair, with a lightness of touch which many doctors might have envied.
There was a knock at the door, and Miss Lascelles entered the room.
"That's right," said Mona, holding out her hand, "sit down."
"Thanks," was the reply, in Miss Lascelles's cultured, musical drawl. "I am not going to stay. I came to ask if you would lend me your notes of that leucocythæmia case. I am working up the spleen just now."
"I will, with pleasure. But don't be in such a hurry, now that you have come so far. I never get a chance to speak to you in hospital. Sit down and tell me what the scientist thinks of it all."
Miss Lascelles pulled off her hat unceremoniously, and passed her hand through her dark hair.
"Oh, reform it altogether!" she cried. "There is a deal of humbug in the profession, and I don't know that the women have lessened it."