“His other doctors have, no doubt, already warned him. Besides it’s only fair that he should know his danger. I never keep the truth from a patient when things are desperate, like this.”
“Then you hold out but little hope of him?”
Bob Tulloch, who had been with me at Charterhouse, stroked his dark beard and replied in the negative, while the stranger, who had been watching us very closely, said in Italian in a low faint voice:—
“I know! I know! I’m dying—dying!” and he laughed curiously, almost triumphantly. “I’m dying—and I shall escape them. Ah! signore,” he added, with his bright black eyes fixed upon mine, “if you only knew the truth—the terrible, awful truth—you would pity me—you would, I am convinced, stand my friend. You would not believe the evil that men say of me.”
“Then tell me the truth,” I urged quickly, bending down to him in eagerness.
But he only shook his head and clenched his even white teeth.
“No,” he said, with a fierce imprecation in Italian. “Mine is a secret—her secret—a secret that I have kept until now—a secret that none shall know!”