She waited for half an hour, during which the sleeping man slept on
without movement, and the voices of the two men in the salle 'a
manger rose and fell in conversation. Presently there was silence,
broken only by an occasional remark. "They have lit their cigars,"
Fanny murmured; "they will take their coffee, and in a few minutes they
will be here."
When they came in a few minutes later, they had their cigars, and Lord
Harry's face was slightly flushed, perhaps with the wine he had taken
at breakfast--perhaps with the glass of brandy after his coffee.
The doctor threw himself into a chair and crossed his legs, looking
thoughtfully at his patient. Lord Harry stood over him.
"Every day," he said, "the man gets better."
"He has got better every day, so far," said the doctor.
"Every day his face gets fatter, and he grows less like me."
"It is true," said the doctor.
"Then--what the devil are we to do?"
"Wait a little longer," said the doctor.
The woman in her hiding-place hardly dared to breathe.
"What?" asked Lord Harry. "You mean that the man, after all--"
"Wait a little longer," the doctor repeated quietly.
"Tell me"--Lord Harry bent over the sick man eagerly--"you think----"
"Look here," the doctor said. "Which of us two has had a medical
education--you, or I?"
"You, of course."
"Yes; I, of course. Then I tell you, as a medical man, that appearances
are sometimes deceptive. This man, for instance--he looks better; he
thinks he is recovering; he feels stronger. You observe that he is
fatter in the face. His nurse, Fanny Mere, went away with the knowledge
that he was much better, and the conviction that he was about to leave
the house as much recovered as such a patient with such a disorder can
expect."
"Well?"
"Well, my lord, allow me to confide in you. Medical men mostly keep
their knowledge in such matters to themselves. We know and recognise
symptoms which to you are invisible. By these symptoms--by those
symptoms," he repeated slowly and looking hard at the other man, "I
know that this man--no longer Oxbye, my patient, but--another--is in a
highly dangerous condition. I have noted the symptoms in my book"--he
tapped his pocket--"for future use."
"And when--when----" Lord Harry was frightfully pale. His lips moved,
but he could not finish the sentence. The Thing he had agreed to was
terribly near, and it looked uglier than he had expected.