“Land’s sake, Count!” cried Mr Hicks, “bluff it out. You’ll be all right in a day or two. Bluff will carry you through yet.”
“It may, but I feel pretty certain it won’t. No, Hicks, I’m cornered. Do your best with it, Paschics. Oh, to be for one hour—for ten minutes—the man I was a month ago! But that’s all over now.”
“Say, Count, you’re sick yet,” Mr Hicks cried after him as he went out. “You bet you’ll be as spry as ever some time soon. Mr Mansfield,” he added hastily, “if I were you I guess I’d give Dietrich the word to keep an eye on his master, and not leave any shooting-irons lying around.”
Mansfield rushed out with frantic haste, and Mr Hicks and the horrified Paschics put their heads together and drew up a document which might help to postpone the need of an explanation for a day or two. Count Mortimer was still suffering from the effects of the dastardly attack made upon him at Jericho, but he left his character and his cause confidently in the hands of Europe, in the full assurance that, until he was able to vindicate them himself, judgment would be suspended. When this had been despatched, there was no more that they could do. If Cyril did not regain his former powers of mind, all, as he had said, was lost.
He returned to the room after about an hour of restless pacing up and down upon the house-top, with Mansfield, who fondly believed himself unseen, dogging him from behind the trellis the whole time. He seemed to have shaken off for the present the horror which had seized him in its grip, and apologised for his agitation, after approving the steps which Paschics had taken.
“I must see a specialist,” he added carelessly, “and no doubt he will be able to put me right. Not a word of this, please, especially to the Queen. And, Mansfield, you will be interested to know that I don’t intend to commit suicide just at present, so that you need not devote your leisure hours to keeping me in view.”
“Ernestine, are you on good terms with your cousin Prince Ramon of Arragon?”
“He and his wife called upon me this afternoon—before we were at all settled, indeed. I think they mean to be friendly. But were you thinking of inviting them to the—the wedding, Cyril?”
“Not for a moment. I was wondering whether Prince Ramon would object to my consulting him professionally?”
Don Ramon of Arragon was the representative of one of those junior branches of the Pannonian Imperial house which have been deprived of political power by the changes of the nineteenth century. Far from murmuring over his loss of sovereignty, he had accepted the inevitable with marked satisfaction, and devoted himself to the study of medicine, giving his services freely to all who chose to consult him. He was now well known as a specialist in diseases of the brain, and rumour said that even his pious intention in visiting Palestine was not unmixed with the desire of investigating certain forms of madness supposed to be peculiar to the East.