“Perfectly!  Papa, tell him what they say, and I’ll find him their prescriptions.”  She went to a drawer, and rummaged, affecting not to listen.

Lusignan complied.  “First of all, sir, I must tell you they are confident it is not the lungs, but the liver.”

“The what!” shouted Christopher.

“Ah!” screamed Rosa.  “Oh, don’t!—­bawling!”

“And don’t you screech,” said her father, with a look of misery and apprehension impartially distributed on the resounding pair.

“You must have misunderstood them,” murmured Staines, in a voice that was now barely audible a yard off.  “The hemorrhage of a bright red color, and expelled without effort or nausea?”

“From the liver—­they have assured me again and again,” said Lusignan.

Christopher’s face still wore a look of blank amazement, till Rosa herself confirmed it positively.

Then he cast a look of agony upon her, and started up in a passion, forgetting once more that his host abhorred the sonorous.  “Oh, shame! shame!” he cried, “that the noble profession of medicine should be disgraced by ignorance such as this.”  Then he said, sternly, “Sir, do not mistake my motives; but I decline to have anything further to do with this case, until those two gentlemen have been relieved of it; and, as this is very harsh, and on my part unprecedented, I will give you one reason out of many I could give you.  Sir, there is no road from the liver to the throat by which blood can travel in this way, defying the laws of gravity; and they knew, from the patient, that no strong expellent force has ever been in operation.  Their diagnosis, therefore, implies agnosis, or ignorance too great to be forgiven.  I will not share my patient with two gentlemen who know so little of medicine, and know nothing of anatomy, which is the A B C of medicine.  Can I see their prescriptions?”

These were handed to him.  “Good heavens!” said he, “have you taken all these?”

“Most of them.”

“Why, then you have drunk about two gallons of unwholesome liquids, and eaten a pound or two of unwholesome solids.  These medicines have co-operated with the malady.  The disorder lies, not in the hemorrhage, but in the precedent extravasation that is a drain on the system; and how is the loss to be supplied?  Why, by taking a little more nourishment than before; there is no other way; and probably Nature, left to herself, might have increased your appetite to meet the occasion.  But those two worthies have struck that weapon out of Nature’s hand; they have peppered away at the poor ill-used stomach with drugs and draughts, not very deleterious I grant you, but all more or less indigestible, and all tending, not to whet the appetite, but to clog the stomach, or turn the stomach, or pester the stomach, and so impair the appetite, and so co-operate, indirectly, with the malady.”

“This is good sense,” said Lusignan.  “I declare, I—­I wish I knew how to get rid of them.”