They both turned to me, and Dr. Knox’s confused start was a sufficient answer.
“You heard all I said, Johnny Ludlow?” spoke Dr. Knox.
“All. I am very sorry.”
“Well, it cannot be helped now. You will not let it transpire?”
“That I certainly will not.”
“We shall have to take you into our confidence—to include you in the plot,” said Arnold Knox, with a smile. “I believe we might have a less trustworthy adherent.”
“You could not have one more true.”
“Right, Johnny,” added Mr. Tamlyn. “But I do hope Dr. Knox is mistaken. I think you must be, Arnold. What are your grounds for this new theory?”
“I don’t tell you that it is quite new,” replied Dr. Knox. “A faint idea of it has been floating in my mind for some little time. As to grounds, I have no more to go upon than you have had. Lady Jenkins is in a state that we do not understand; neither you nor I can fathom what is amiss with her; and I need not point out that such a condition of things is unsatisfactory to a medical man, and sets him thinking.”
“I am sure I have not been able to tell what it is that ails her,” concurred old Tamlyn, in a helpless kind of tone. “She seems always to be in a lethargy, more or less; to possess no proper self-will; to have parted, so to say, with all her interest in life.”