“Only that stupid hall-boy,” answered Lola calmly. “He is always making mistakes. What a time you two have been, to be sure. I thought that you had deserted me for good.”
“No chance of that, my dear,” said Dr. Crossett. “In fact it was to be sure of having a long talk with you that I hurried your father back.”
“I am afraid we must postpone that talk for a little while, Doctor. I am going to my room for a few moments. You will excuse me, won’t you?” She smiled sweetly at him and held out her hand, and he bowed over it gallantly as he answered:
“Come back soon. I shall be waiting.”
“Oh, I promise you that you shall see quite enough of me, Doctor,” she replied; “before you are here a day you will be glad to get me out of your sight. I know I am going to bore you dreadfully, but I have so many things I want to talk over with you, and so many questions I want to ask you, about things that happened long ago before I was here to be a trouble to you.”
She went gayly down the long hall, stopping at her door to wave her hand at him as he stood watching her.
“No sign there of nervous troubles,” he said as he joined her father in the sitting room. “Her eyes are bright and clear, her voice is steady. She looks happy and well. You, Martin, are the greatest inventor in the world’s history.”
“Hardly that,” said the Doctor with a laugh.
“Ah, yes,” insisted the Frenchman. “Men have made fortunes, fame, history by the children of their brain, but what man before, by the power of his mind, has brought back from the dead his own daughter?”
“A curious study,” said Dr. Barnhelm thoughtfully as he seated himself in a deep chair by the table and motioned to his friend to sit opposite to him; “remarkably curious, these things we call life, and death, and body, and soul. It is a queer fact, Paul, that no matter how we strive our knowledge stops short at the gates of death. What is beyond?”