“Yes: about the worst that I ever remember to have had.”
“Is their no cure for them?”
“None but patience.”
“But, surely, they may be alleviated?”
“I have tried remedies without end, but to no purpose.”
“Will you let me make you up a mixture from a prescription of my own? I have all the materials at hand. If I make it up, will you promise to take it? I don’t say that it will cure your headache, but I do believe that it will give you relief.”
There was a strangely anxious, almost haggard look on his face as he spoke thus, and yet his eyes were never once bent on Lionel. He had picked up one of the cues, and seemed to be busily examining it. When he had done speaking, he waited for his cousin’s answer with parted lips, in a sort of breathless hush.
Lionel laughed a rather dismal laugh.
“Well, if you have any faith in your mixture, I don’t mind trying it,” he said. “It can’t make the pain worse, and there is just a faint chance that it may ease it a bit—or that I may fancy that it does, which is pretty much the same thing.”
The cue dropped from Kester’s fingers and rattled on the floor. “What was that?” he said, suddenly, looking round with a shiver. “I could have sworn that somebody touched me on the shoulder.”