"This is a very short visit," I said. "Cannot we persuade you to give us a little more of your society?"
"I fear not," he answered. "I am developing quite a practice in Venice, and my time is no longer my own."
"You have other patients?" I asked, in some surprise, for I did not think he would condescend to such a thing.
"I have your friend, Don Martinos, now upon my hands," he said. "The good Galaghetti is so abominably grateful for what I did for his child, that he will insist on trying to draw me into experimenting upon other people."
"Would it be indiscreet to ask what is the matter with the Don?" I said. "He does not look like a man who would be likely to be an invalid."
"I do not think there is so very much wrong with him," Nikola replied vaguely. "At any rate it is not anything that cannot be very easily put right."
When he left the room I accompanied him down the corridor as far as the hall.
"The fact of the matter is," he began, when we were alone together, "our friend the Don has been running the machinery of life a little too fast of late. I am told that he lost no less a sum than fifty thousand pounds in English money last week, and certainly his nerves are not what they once were."
"He is a gambler, then?" I said.
"An inveterate gambler, I should say," Nikola answered. "And when a Spaniard takes to that sort of amusement, he generally does it most thoroughly."