“I am a physician, madam, and by your leave I will close the wound before Miss Somerville recovers consciousness.”
“Pray do, doctor——” she paused, and he supplied the hiatus.
“Ludington, of the —— Hospital, madam.”
She called Eva’s maid, and rendering him every necessary assistance, they watched with interest as he unbound the handkerchief, and, bathing the blood from Eva’s brow, closed the little jagged cut from the stone with a few skillful stitches done with exquisite skill and tenderness.
Then, looking up with a pale face and twitching lips at Eva’s aunt, he hurriedly described the accident, adding the courteous hope that Reginald Hamilton would escape injury.
“I must go now. She will revive directly, and you must keep her quiet for a day or so, then she will very likely get well by Christmas,” he said, turning to go, with a pang of bitterness in his tortured heart.
“You will call again to-morrow, Doctor Ludington!” she exclaimed.
“No, I cannot come again. My—my duties at the hospital are too urgent, madam. But it is not likely she will need another physician. I have done all that is necessary. If—if she does not get on all right you must call in your family doctor!” he answered, with a mixture of coldness and excitement, bowing himself out with a brusqueness that made her exclaim:
“Dear me, how very busy he must be.”