Captain Carey walked along the street with me toward home.  He had taken my arm in his most confidential manner, but he did not open his lips till we reached Brook Street.

“Martin,” he said, “I’ve turned it over in my own mind, and I agree with Tardif.  Olivia is no more dead than you or me.  We shall find out all about it in August, if not before.  Cheer up, my boy!  I tell you what:  Julia and I will wait till we are sure about Olivia.”

“No, no,” I interrupted; “you and Julia have nothing to do with it.  When is your wedding to be?”

“If you have no objection,” he answered—­“have you the least shadow of an objection?”

“Not a shadow of a shadow,” I said.

“Well, then,” he resumed, bashfully, “what do you think of August?  It is a pleasant month, and would give us time for that trip to Switzerland, you know.  Not any sooner, because of your poor mother; and later, if you like that better.”

“Not a day later,” I said; “my father has been married again these four months.”

Yet I felt a little sore for my mother’s memory.  How quickly it was fading away from every heart but mine!  If I could but go to her now, and pour out all my troubled thoughts into her listening, indulgent ear!  Not even Olivia herself, who could never be to me more than she was at this moment, could fill her place.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH.

FULFILLING THE PLEDGE.

We—­that is, Dr. Senior, Lowry, and I—­made our examination of Foster, and held our consultation, three days from that time.

There was no doubt whatever that he was suffering from the same disease as that which had been the death of my mother—­a disease almost invariably fatal, sooner or later.  A few cases of cure, under most favorable circumstances, had been reported during the last half-century; but the chances were dead against Foster’s recovery.  In all probability, a long and painful illness, terminating in inevitable death, lay before him.  In the opinion of my two senior physicians, all that I could do would be to alleviate the worst pangs of it.

His case haunted me day and night.  In that deep under-current of consciousness which lurks beneath our surface sensations and impressions, there was always present the image of Foster, with his pale, cynical face, and pitiless eyes.  With this, was the perpetual remembrance that a subtile malady, beyond the reach of our skill, was slowly eating away his life.  The man I abhorred; but the sufferer, mysteriously linked with the memories which clung about my mother, aroused her most urgent, instinctive compassion.  Only once before had I watched the conflict between disease and its remedy with so intense an interest.

It was a day or two after our consultation that I came accidentally upon the little note-book which I had kept in Guernsey—­a private note-book, accessible only to myself.  It was night; Jack, as usual, was gone out, and I was alone.  I turned over the leaves merely for listless want of occupation.  All at once I came upon an entry, made in connection with my mother’s illness, which recalled to me the discovery I believed I had made of a remedy for her disease, had it only been applied in its earlier stages.  It had slipped out of my mind, but now my memory leaped upon it with irresistible force.