"Do you mean that you will restore the Warden's sight?"
"I have every hope of doing so."
"But if his sight can be restored—then my wife's——"
"Can be restored also," said the surgeon complacently.
Jeremy sat down feeling faint and dizzy.
"Did you not know that cataract was curable?"
"I am scholar enough," answered Jeremy, "to have read that King John of Aragon was so cured by the Jew, Abiathar of Lerida, by means of a needle thrust through the eyeball——"
"Barbarous, my dear sir, barbarous!" cried the surgeon, raising a white, protesting hand. "One in a million may be so cured. There is even now a pestilential fellow of a quack, calling himself the Chevalier Taylor, who is prodding folks' eyes with a six-inch skewer. Have you never heard of him?"
"Alas, sir," said Jeremy, "I live so out of the world, and my daily converse is limited to my dear wife and the parson hard by, who is as recluse a scholar as I am myself."
"If you wish your wife to regain her sight," said Mr. Hattaway, "avoid this Chevalier Taylor like the very devil. But if you will intrust her to my care, Mr. Hattaway, surgeon of St. Thomas' Hospital, London, pupil of the great Cheselden——"