“He won’t want to come again, dear,” said Lady Repton.
“What!” said Sir Charles, “a hundred pounds for that?”
“My dear—if you knew the difference!” said Lady Repton.
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said impatiently, “the pain’s gone. It can’t be helped, and of course ninety’s a broken sum. He’d have taken fifty, Maria. I ought to have seen to this myself,” he added.
And so, the matter settled, he returned.
“You’ll allow me to leave you one moment with her ladyship,” he said in his most winning manner. Then suddenly, “Good-night,” and with a warm grasp of the hand Sir Charles left them.
Lady Repton was moved beyond words. She put into the young man’s hand a packet of notes which she had carefully prepared. “It is nothing,” she said, “it is nothing for what you have done, but oh, doctor, will it last?”
“It’ll last for ever—at least,” he corrected himself hurriedly, “they’ve all lasted so fur, and it’s more’n a year since I did the first. It isn’t the kind er thing that comes on again. ’Tain’t a growth.” He was almost going to say what it was, when he remembered that he held the monopoly. Then, lest he should stay too long in that house where he was, after all, but a paid instrument, he very courteously bade her good-night, and as he went home, carrying his little bag, Scipio reflected that he liked Maria, Lady Repton, better than he did her husband. But he remembered that operations for Veracititis were, of their nature, causes for grievous disillusion.
He put the matter from his mind and took a cab back to his hotel and to bed.
Thus was Sir Charles Repton cured of Veracititis, late upon Wednesday night, the 3rd of June, 1915, and he slept his old sleep.