Chapter 27

CHAPTER XXVII.

The doctor's professional visit to Hintock House was promptly
repeated the next day and the next. He always found Mrs. Charmond
reclining on a sofa, and behaving generally as became a patient
who was in no great hurry to lose that title. On each occasion he
looked gravely at the little scratch on her arm, as if it had been
a serious wound.

He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on
her temple, and it was very convenient to put a piece of black
plaster on this conspicuous part of her person in preference to
gold-beater's skin, so that it might catch the eyes of the
servants, and make his presence appear decidedly necessary, in
case there should be any doubt of the fact.

"Oh--you hurt me!" she exclaimed one day.

He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the
scrape had turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous to
vanishing altogether. "Wait a moment, then--I'll damp it," said
Fitzpiers. He put his lips to the place and kept them there till
the plaster came off easily. "It was at your request I put it
on," said he.

"I know it," she replied. "Is that blue vein still in my temple
that used to show there? The scar must be just upon it. If the
cut had been a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood
indeed!" Fitzpiers examined so closely that his breath touched her
tenderly, at which their eyes rose to an encounter--hers showing
themselves as deep and mysterious as interstellar space. She
turned her face away suddenly. "Ah! none of that! none of that--I
cannot coquet with you!" she cried. "Don't suppose I consent to
for one moment. Our poor, brief, youthful hour of love-making was
too long ago to bear continuing now. It is as well that we should
understand each other on that point before we go further."

"Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the historic
gloves, so it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I
am no trifler. I naturally cannot forget that little space in
which I flitted across the field of your vision in those days of
the past, and the recollection opens up all sorts of imaginings."

"Suppose my mother had not taken me away?" she murmured, her
dreamy eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree.

"I should have seen you again."

"And then?"

"Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would
have immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of
heart at last."

"Why?"

"Well--that's the end of all love, according to Nature's law. I
can give no other reason."

"Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed. "Since we are only
picturing the possibilities of that time, don't, for pity's sake,