"You amaze me!" he exclaimed. "You--did I understand you to say that you were in personal attendance upon a patient?"
"Well, well, forgive my astonishment," he continued. "I had no idea. At any rate I am glad that your patient's state of health permits you to leave him for a time."
"As a matter of fact," she sighed, "my patient is very ill indeed, I am afraid. However, the doctor shares the responsibility with me, and he is staying with him now for half an hour."
"May I, in that case," he begged, "share your promenade?"
"With pleasure," she acquiesced, without enthusiasm. "You will have to take off some of your coats, though."
"I am suffering from chill," he explained. "I sometimes think that I shall never be warm again, after my experience of yesterday."
He divested himself, however, of his outside coat, arranged his muffler carefully, thrust his hands into his pockets, and fell into step by her side. "I am interested," he observed, "in illness. What exactly is the matter with your charge?"
"He has had a bad operation," she replied, "and there are complications."
"Dear me! Dear me!" Crawshay exclaimed, in a shocked tone. "And in such a state he chooses to make a perilous voyage like this?"
"That is rather his affair, is it not?" she said drily.
"Precisely," her companion agreed. "Precisely! I should not, perhaps, have made the remark. Sickness, however, interests me very much. I have the misfortune not to be strong myself, and my own ailments occupy a good deal of my attention."
"You suffer from nerves, don't you?" she enquired.
"And yet," she continued, still watching him in a puzzled fashion, "you made that extraordinary voyage through the air to catch this steamer. That doesn't seem to me to be at all the sort of thing a nervous person would do."
"It was for a bet," he explained confidentially. "The only occasion upon which I forget my nerves is when there is a bet to be lost or won. At the time," he went on, "my deportment was, I think, all that could have been desired. The sensations of which I was undoubtedly conscious I contrived to adequately conceal. The after-shock, however, has, I must admit, been considerable."
"Was it really so terribly important," she enquired, "that you should be in London next week?"