United States or Solomon Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We'll set the Sister and the nurse to try this time, and we'll turn her bed north and south, in the line of the earth's magnetism." But just then the lady's father, the old Lord Rivercourt, appeared in response to the doctor's telegram, and the experiment with the women had to wait. The old lord was naturally filled with wonder and anxiety when he saw his apparently lifeless daughter.
Before Lefevre could out of his perplexity snatch a resolution, Lord Rivercourt had pulled the cord to stop the coachman. The coachman, however, having received orders to drive home, was driving at a goodly pace, and it was only on a second summons through the cord that he slackened speed, and obeyed his master's direction to "draw up by the kerb."
Lord Rivercourt and he talked of the strange events of the evening, while Lady Mary leaned back and half-absently listened. They were proceeding thus along Piccadilly, when she suddenly caught the doctor's arm and exclaimed "Oh! Look! The very man I met in the Park! I am sure of it! I can never forget the face!"
He pitied Julius's distress, and hurried through the rest of his revelation, careless of the result he had sought. "It may prove," said he, "a far more serious affair than the other. Lord Rivercourt is not the man to sit quietly under an outrage like that." Julius astonished him by demanding, "What is the outrage? Has the lady given an account of it? What does she accuse the man of?"
I shall get on his tracks at once; he can't have left the Park in broad daylight, a singular man like him, without being noticed." "It rather puzzles me," said the doctor, "what crime you will charge him with." "It is an outrage," said Lord Rivercourt; "and if it is not criminal, it seems about time it were made so." "Oh, we'll class it, my lord," said the detective; "never fear."
"Worse?" exclaimed Julius, dropping into the chair by the window, and glancing, as a less preoccupied observer than the doctor would have remarked, with a wistful desire at the door. "Much worse though, I believe, from the same hand," said Lefevre. "A lady this time, titularly and really a lady, Lady Mary Fane, the daughter of Lord Rivercourt."
The detective departed; but Lord Rivercourt seemed not inclined to stir. "You will excuse me," said Lefevre; "but I must perform a very delicate operation." "To be sure," said the old lord; "and you want me to go. How stupid of me! I kept waiting for my daughter to wake up; but I see that, of course, you have to rouse her. It did not occur to me what that machine meant.
You will have to decide that," said he, with a smile, "not only as lover, but as doctor." Lefevre hesitated for but an instant; for what true, manly lover would have decided to withdraw till another day when the door to his mistress was held open to him? "I'll see her now," he said. Lord Rivercourt led the doctor back to his daughter, and left him with her.
"She has not spoken yet, to me, at least," said Lefevre; "and I don't know what the outrage can be called, but I am sure Lord Rivercourt and he is a man of immense influence will move heaven and earth to give it a legal name, and to get it punishment. There is a detective on the man's track now." "Oh!" said Julius. "Well, it will be time enough to discuss the punishment when the man is caught.
When he heard who she was, and when he caught the import of an aside from Lord Rivercourt that it would be worth any one's while to discover the mysterious offender, professional zeal sparkled in his eye. "I think I know my man," said he; and the doctor looked the lively interest he felt.
Word Of The Day