Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/19

 first time that he wore evening-dress. His linen was crushed and tumbled, and as he buttoned his over-coat closer across his breast, the doctor's eye caught a dark-red stain on the shirt.

"The affair took place this morning?"

"Yes; I drove out from the ball."

The man was going. Rondelet made a struggle to free himself from this mystery into which he was being forced against his will.

"Monsieur, neither you nor Robert Feuardent have the right to ask this thing of me. Your name I do not even know. I refuse to be accessory to this affair. You must have had some other practitioner upon the field."

"A mere boy, who has lost his nerve and insists upon a consultation with some one less unskilled and timid than himself."

Philip flushed, and his visitor, with a formal bow, vanished.

"Till a quarter past six," he called from the lower hall.

The two men had begun their conversation in English, but had quickly lapsed into French, after the manner of their kind under all strong excitements.

To these people, with whom the two languages are spoken indifferently from the cradle, the Latin tongue is the natural expression of all strong emotions.