"O Mark! don't let it escape you. Write tonight and secure it. How do you know but Barker may be giving it to somebody else?"
She was growing more eager than he. In her inexperience, she knew nothing of those miserable calamities--failure, deceit, fruition deferred. Not that her husband was purposely deceiving her; he fully believed in the good luck he spoke of. Mark Cray's was one of those sanguine roving natures which see an immediate fortune in every new scheme brought to them--if it be only wild enough.
"How long have you known of this, Mark!"
"Oh, a month or two. But, as you see, I would not stir in it. I should like to run up to town for a day to meet Barker; and, on my return, we'd set about the arrangements for leaving. There will be no more lonely dinners for you, Carine, once we are away from here. I shall not have to be beating about, all hours and weathers, from one patient's door to another, or dancing attendance on that precious Infirmary, knowing that you are sitting at home waiting for me, and the meal getting cold."
"O Mark, how delightful it will be! And perhaps you would never have risen into note, as my uncle did."
"No, I never should. Dr. Davenal's heart was in his profession, mine--"
Mark Cray stopped abruptly. The avowal upon his lips had been, "mine recoils from it."
It was even so. He did literally recoil from his chosen profession. Unstable in all his ways, Mark had become heartily sick of the routine of a surgeon's life. And since the affair of Lady Oswald a conviction had been gradually taking possession of him that he was entirely unfitted for it; nay, that he was incompetent To betray his incompetency, would be to lose caste for ever in the medical world of Hallingham.
Mark Cray rose from his chair again, and stood on the rug as before, pushing back his hair from his brow incessantly in the restlessness that was upon him. He was always restless when he thought of that past night; or of the certainty that he might at any time be called upon to perform again what he had failed in then. It was not altogether his skill he doubted, for Mark Cray was a vain and self-sufficient man; but he felt that the very-present consciousness of having broken down before would induce a nervousness that might cause him to break down again. Had it been practicable, Mark Cray would have taken flight from Hallingham and the medical world that very hour, and hid himself away from it for ever.
"It has become hateful to me, Carine!"