"A doctor, I think, ought to know better."
The little pulse in her eyelid was beating furiously.
He stood up, too.
"A doctor," he said, very quietly, "I think does know better than one who is not a doctor how to treat a sick man. What you said to me in the temple this morning, and what I heard when I was in Cairo and at Luxor before I came up the river, has alarmed me about my friend, and I must request to be allowed to see him."
"At Cairo and Luxor! What did you hear at Cairo and Luxor?"
"At Cairo I heard from a man that your husband was too ill to travel, and therefore certainly could not under any circumstances have gone to England when he heard of his brother's death. At Luxor from a woman I heard very much the same story."
"Of course, and probably with plenty of embroidery and exaggeration."
"Perhaps. But sunstroke can be a very serious thing."
"I never heard you were a specialist in sunstroke."
"And is Doctor Baring Hartley, who is watching this case from Assouan?"