"I was abroad, as you are aware, at the time my uncle died," she began; "but you saw him, I believe, in your medical capacity, up to the day of his death?"
"Yes," he replied. "I saw Mr. Denison daily; and I was with him when he died."
"The end, when it did come, was very sudden."
"Both sudden and unexpected," returned the Doctor. "I was utterly taken by surprise. I knew, of course, that Mr. Denison's disorder could have but one termination, but I had no thought that the end was so near. The heart suddenly failed in its action, and--and all was over. Only a few hours before, when I was with him, I had detected no cause for fear."
"You are aware that previously to last Christmas--in October I think it was--Dr. Spreckley, who had attended my uncle for twenty years, and who ought to have known his constitution if it were possible for anyone to know it, gave it as his decided opinion that Mr. Denison could not live far into the new year--if so long as that."
"Mr. Denison himself informed me of that opinion."
"And yet your skill prolonged his life until nearly the end of May?"
Dr. Jago bowed again, but said nothing.
"Then you, although a much younger practitioner than Dr. Spreckley, must have pursued a very much more efficient mode of treatment with your patient than that adopted by him?"
Dr. Jago shrugged his shoulders, leaned forward in his chair, and smiled faintly. "I have not the slightest wish in the world to disparage Dr. Spreckley," he said, "but it may be that he is a little old-fashioned in his ideas; it may be that he has hardly grown with the times. Medicine has made great strides during the last twenty years, and a middle-aged country practitioner, unless he be a great reader and a man of inquiring mind, would find many things taught, and many theories demonstrated in the schools of London and Paris, which were hardly as much as mooted when he was a young man."