“You want to know who that is?” he said briskly, indicating a dark, bearded man, with impressive eyes, who sat next Egidia.
“How quick you are!”
“Not at all. Everybody wants to know who Dr. André is!”
She felt snubbed; he went on.
“He is the celebrated occultist and oculist. The first is his business, the second his pleasure. But he works the two together with great success. I don’t know if he quite succeeds in taking in our dear Egidia; she is very shrewd, for a woman novelist. André’s theory of ocular practice consists largely of the due relation of the state of the eyesight to general health, and thence to hypnotism, do you see? People are unkind enough to call him a quack, but I think that very unfair, for he is quite amusing!”
Mrs. Elles did not know if St. Jerome was amusing or not; she was sure he was spiteful. She felt that his flighty and casual manner suggested some disrespect towards the Lady from the Provinces, but perhaps that was London’s way? She meant that London’s way should not by any means astonish or perturb her, so she went on calmly.
“If I were not afraid of your thinking me conceited, I should say that I think the hypnotist is looking at me!”
“Of course he is. He is trying to mesmerize you. That is his little game. He boasts that he can make anyone in the world cross the whole length of the room to him if he has a mind—and yet he lives only three floors down, in these very Mansions.”
Mrs. Elles again suspected Mr. St. Jerome of making fun of her.
“I hope he won’t care to thoroughly exercise his powers just now,” she said, “for I am a very impressionable subject. I might get up, and go to him this very minute, and that would be awkward. Introduce me after dinner, and I will tell him that I once wore blue spectacles for a month without stopping.”