"Worse, eh?" he said; "don't say I am worse."
I sat down beside him, and told him what I believed to be his chance of life; not concealing from him that I proposed to try, if he gave his consent, a mode of treatment which had never been practised before. His eye, keen and sharp as that of a lynx, seemed to read my thoughts as Dr. Senior's had done.
"Martin Dobrée," he said, in a voice so different from his ordinary caustic tone that it almost startled me, "I can trust you. I put myself with implicit confidence into your hands."
The last chance—dare I say the last hope?—was gone. I stood pledged on my honor as a physician, to employ this discovery, which had been laid open to me by my mother's fatal illness, for the benefit of the man whose life was most harmful to Olivia and myself. I felt suffocated, stifled. I opened the window for a minute or two, and leaned through it to catch the fresh breath of the outer air.
"I must tell you," I said, when I drew my head in again, "that you must not expect to regain your health and strength so completely as to be able to return to your old dissipations. You must make up your mind to lead a regular, quiet, abstemious life, avoiding all excitement. Nine months out of the twelve at least, if not the whole year, you must spend in the country for the sake of fresh air. A life in town would kill you in six months. But if you are careful of yourself you may live to sixty or seventy."
"Life at any price!" he answered, in his old accents, "yet you put it in a dreary light before me. It hardly seems worth while to buy such an existence, especially with that wife of mine downstairs, who cannot endure the country, and is only a companion for a town-life. Now, if it had been Olivia—you could imagine life in the country endurable with Olivia?"
What could I answer to such a question, which ran through me like an electric shock? A brilliant phantasmagoria flashed across my brain—a house in Guernsey with Olivia in it—sunshine—flowers—the singing of birds—the music of the sea—the pure, exhilarating atmosphere. It had vanished into a dead blank before I opened my mouth, though probably a moment's silence had not intervened. Foster's lips were curled into a mocking smile.
"There would be more chance for you now," I said, "if you could have better air than this."
"How can I?" he asked.
"Be frank with me," I answered, "and tell me what your means are. It would be worth your while to spend your last farthing upon this chance."