"Quite needless, Lepel. I met your doctor this morning. I know that a council of physicians decided you would die before the year was out."He paused there.
"And they proved to be wrong," I added.
"They might have proved to be right," Rothsay rejoined, "but for the accident which spilled your medicine and the despair of yourself which decided you on taking no more."I could hardly believe that I understood him. "Do you assert," Isaid, "that my medicine would have killed me, if I had taken the rest of it?""I have no doubt that it would."
"Will you explain what you mean?"
"Let me have your explanation first. I was not prepared to find Susan in your room. I was surprised to see traces of tears in her face. Something has happened in my absence. Am I concerned in it?""You are."
I said it quietly--in full possession of myself. The trial of fortitude through which I had already passed seemed to have blunted my customary sense of feeling. I approached the disclosure which Iwas now bound to make with steady resolution, resigned to the worst that could happen when the truth was known.
