"What is it this Dr. Danvers apprehends?"
"He fears an affection of the spinal marrow, a slow and lingering malady, full of pain. O, it is too dreadful!" cried the agonised wife, clasping her hands in a paroxysm of despair. "What has he done to be so afflicted? how has he deserved such suffering, he who worked so hard, and denied himself all pleasures in his youth—he who has been so good and generous to others? Why should he be tortured?"
"Dear Mrs. Wyllard, pray do not give way to grief. The doctor may be mistaken. He ought not to have told you so much."
"It was right of him to tell me. I begged him to keep nothing from me—not to treat me as a child. If there is a martyrdom to be borne, I will bear my part of it. Yes, I will suffer with him, pang for pang, for to see him in pain will be as sharp an agony for me as the actual torture can be for him. He is resting now, dozing from the effect of the morphia which they have injected under the skin."
"I trust if Sir William Spencer come that he will be able to give you a more hopeful opinion."
"Yes, I am putting my trust in that. But I am full of fear. Dr. Danvers has such a shrewd clever air. He does not look the kind of man to be mistaken."
"But in these nervous disorders there is always room for error. You must hope for the best."
"I will try to hope, for Julian's sake. Goodbye. I must go back to my place at his bedside. I don't want him to see a strange face when he awakes."
"Good-bye. Remember, if there is any service I can render you, the slightest or the greatest, you have only to command me. I shall call this evening to hear how your patient progresses, and if Spencer is coming. But I shall not ask to see you."
He left the hotel full of trouble at the agony of one he loved. He thought of Dora in her helplessness, her loneliness, watching the slow decay of that vigorous frame, the gradual extinction of that powerful mind. What martyrdom could be more terrible for a tender-hearted woman?