She passed by the remark, hardly hearing it. "But Mark--you say you can't tell yet what it is."
"Neither can I. But I can tell what it is not. I'll get you a little ointment to rub on it, and I make no doubt it will go away."
Caroline was doing her hair at the moment. She had the brush in one hand, the hair in the other; and she paused just as she was, looking fixedly at her husband.
"Mark, if you don't know what it is, perhaps somebody else would know. I wish you'd let me show it to a doctor."
Mark laughed. He really believed she must be getting nervous about it, and perhaps deemed it would be the best plan to treat it lightly. "A French doctor Why, Carine, they are not worth a rush."
"I have heard Uncle Richard say the contrary," she persisted. "That the French, as surgeons, are clever men."
"He meant with the knife, I suppose. Well, Caroline, you can let a Frenchman see the lump if it will afford you any satisfaction. You don't ask me what has kept me out all these hours!" rejoined Mark, changing the topic. "I have had a patient at last."
"Yes, I suppose that. He was very ill, perhaps, and you had to remain with him."
She spoke in the wearied, inert tone that seems to betray an entire absence of interest. When the spirit has been borne down with long-continued disappointment, this weariness becomes a sort of disease. It was very prejudicial now, in a physical point of view, to Caroline Cray.
Mark took out the note. "See how well he paid me!" he cried, holding it to her. "I wish such patients would come to the Cheval Blanc every day!"