He spoke with all the haughtiness of a millionnaire to a country practitioner. I could hardly refrain from smiling as I thought of Jack's disgust and indignation.
"As for that," I replied, "most probably neither of us will visit you again. Dr. Lowry will return to-morrow, and you will be in his hands once more."
"No!" he cried, with a passionate urgency in his tone—"no, Martin Dobrée; you said if any man in London could cure me, it was yourself. I cannot leave myself in any other hands. I demand from you the fulfilment of your words. If what you said is true, you can no more leave me to the care of another physician, than you could leave a fellow-creature to drown without doing your utmost to save him. I refuse to be given up to Dr. Lowry."
"But it is by no means a parallel ease," I argued; "you were under his treatment before, and I have no reason whatever to doubt his skill. Why should you feel safer in my hands than in his?"
"Well!" he said, with a sneer, "if Olivia were alive, I dare scarcely have trusted you, could I? But you have nothing to gain by my death, you know; and I have so much faith in you, in your skill, and your honor, and your conscientiousness—if there be any such qualities in the world—that I place myself unfalteringly under your professional care. Shake hands upon it, Martin Dobrée."
In spite of my repugnance, I could not resist taking his offered hand. His eyes were fastened upon me with something of the fabled fascination of a serpent's. I knew instinctively that he would have the power, and use it, of probing every wound he might suspect in me to the quick. Yet he interested me; and there was something not entirely repellent to me about him. Above all for Olivia's sake, should we find her still living, I was anxious to study his character. It might happen, as it does sometimes, that my honor and straight-forwardness might prove a match for his crafty shrewdness.
"There," he said, exultantly, "Martin Dobrée pledges himself to cure me.—Carry, you are the witness of it. If I die, he has been my assassin as surely as if he had plunged a stiletto into me."
"Nonsense!" I answered; "it is not in my power to heal or destroy. I simply pledge myself to use every means I know of for your recovery."
"Which comes to the same thing," he replied; "for, mark you, I will be the most careful patient you ever had. There should be no chance for you, even if Olivia were alive."
Always harping on that one string. Was it nothing more than a lore of torturing some one that made him reiterate those words? Or did he wish to drive home more deeply the conviction that she was indeed dead?