Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/196

188 Dr. Danvers has such a shrewd clever air. He does not look the kind of man to be mistaken."

"But in these nervous disorders there is always room for error. You must hope for the best."

"I will try to hope, for Julian's sake. Goodbye. I must go back to my place at his bedside. I don't want him to see a strange face when he awakes."

"Good-bye. Remember, if there is any service I can render you, the slightest or the greatest, you have only to command me. I shall call this evening to hear how your patient progresses, and if Spencer is coming. But I shall not ask to see you."

He left the hotel full of trouble at the agony of one he loved. He thought of Dora in her helplessness, her loneliness, watching the slow decay of that vigorous frame, the gradual extinction of that powerful mind. What martyrdom could be more terrible for a tender-hearted woman?

He called at the Windsor in the evening. The patient was much the same. Sir William Spencer was expected at eight o'clock next morning.

Edward Heathcote was watching in front of the hotel when the physician drove up in a fly from the station. Dr. Danvers had gone into the hotel a few minutes before. Heathcote waited to see Sir William Spencer leave the hotel in the same fly, accompanied to the carriage door by Dr. Danvers. They were talking as they came out of the porte-cochère, and their faces were very grave. Heathcote felt that the great English doctor had not left hope behind him in those rooms on the first floor, with their sunny windows facing the palace-garden. He had not the heart to intrude upon Dora immediately after the consultation, though he was very anxious to hear Sir William's verdict. He watched the fly drive away, while Dr. Danvers walked briskly in the opposite direction: and then he strolled along the Rue de Rivoli towards the Palais Royal, hardly knowing where he went, so deeply were his thoughts occupied by the grief of the woman he loved.

What if Julian Wyllard were to die, that successful rival of his, the man who had stolen his plighted wife from him? The thought would come, though Heathcote tried to shut his mind against it, though he hated himself for harbouring so selfish an idea. The question would shape itself in his mind, would be answered somehow or other.

If Julian Wyllard were to die, and Dora were again free to wed whom she chose? Would the old love be rekindled in her heart? Would the old lover seem nearer and dearer to her than any other man on earth? Would she reward him for long years of patient devotion, for a faithfulness that had never wavered? Alas, no, he could hope for no such reward, he who had married within a year or two of losing her, who had, in the world's