“Such being the case, I thought it wise to consult a specialist upon cases such as I concluded mine to be. I therefore made an appointment with Dr.——, which I went up to London yesterday to keep.”
“And never told me a word about it!” he broke in, with an almost angry upbraiding in his tone.
“Why should I?” she answered, looking at him with a stoical kindness. “Have you the power of life and death in your hands? I knew”—an expression of resolute pride settling on and dignifying her rugged face—“that whatever he told me, I should be well able to bear it.”
“What did he tell you?”
The question shot out with an abruptness most unlike Edward’s doubtful and suggestive methods, but the tidings sprung upon him had taken him by the throat.
“He could give no decided opinion; there was mischief undoubtedly—yes, but whether malignant or benignant” (a scornful accent on the last word)—“you know the patter of medical phraseology!—it was impossible, at the present stage of the disease, to decide. I am to visit him a second time at the end of two months, when he may perhaps be better able to judge, though even then my fate may be still uncertain. The malady may successfully attack life, it may be comparatively harmless; it may be arrested, it may not; its progress may be slow, may be fast. There, you know as much as I do!”
Looking in his face, she could not think that it was indifference which kept him still mute at the end of her cool and lucid statement.
“I have never been much afraid to die,” Camilla went on presently, in a voice absolutely destitute of all excitement, but with a sort of reverence in it. “Death or life! If I do not deceive myself, I am ready to face the one, I am willing to face the other.” (Across the remorseful smart in the husband’s heart there flashed the painful doubt as to which alternative the willingness applied to.) “The point of the trial lies to me in the uncertainty. I have always been too fond of certainties; that is, doubtless”—with an acquiescent awe in her tone—“why this particular form of ordeal has been sent me.”
Edward had never been much a master of words, and out of the tumult of rueful pain and dazing surprise which now filled his heart and brain, none came to his aid. He could only catch the lean hand nearest him as it hung over the arm of its owner’s chair and press the oldfashioned rings into the spare flesh in an access of remorseful sympathy.
She let her fingers lie in his clasp for a moment, then quickly withdrew them.