“But surely, sir—­” I cried.

“Don’t talk to me, boy!  Don’t attempt to apologise for her.  Such conduct is unpardonable.  She ought to have died.  It was her clear duty.  I said she would die, and she should have known better than to fly in the face of the faculty.  Her recovery is an insult to medical science.  What is the staff about?  Nurse Wade should have prevented it.”

“Still, sir,” I exclaimed, trying to touch him on a tender spot, “the anaesthetic, you know!  Such a triumph for lethodyne!  This case shows clearly that on certain constitutions it may be used with advantage under certain conditions.”

He snapped his fingers.  “Lethodyne! pooh!  I have lost interest in it.  Impracticable!  It is not fitted for the human species.”

“Why so?  Number Fourteen proves—­”

He interrupted me with an impatient wave of his hand; then he rose and paced up and down the room testily.  After a pause, he spoke again.  “The weak point of lethodyne is this:  nobody can be trusted to say when it may be used—­except Nurse Wade,—­which is not science.”

For the first time in my life, I had a glimmering idea that I distrusted Sebastian.  Hilda Wade was right—­the man was cruel.  But I had never observed his cruelty before—­because his devotion to science had blinded me to it.

CHAPTER II

THE EPISODE OF THE GENTLEMAN WHO HAD FAILED FOR EVERYTHING

One day, about those times, I went round to call on my aunt, Lady Tepping.  And lest you accuse me of the vulgar desire to flaunt my fine relations in your face, I hasten to add that my poor dear old aunt is a very ordinary specimen of the common Army widow.  Her husband, Sir Malcolm, a crusty old gentleman of the ancient school, was knighted in Burma, or thereabouts, for a successful raid upon naked natives, on something that is called the Shan frontier.  When he had grown grey in the service of his Queen and country, besides earning himself incidentally a very decent pension, he acquired gout and went to his long rest in Kensal Green Cemetery.  He left his wife with one daughter, and the only pretence to a title in our otherwise blameless family.

My cousin Daphne is a very pretty girl, with those quiet, sedate manners which often develop later in life into genuine self-respect and real depth of character.  Fools do not admire her; they accuse her of being “heavy.”  But she can do without fools; she has a fine, strongly built figure, an upright carriage, a large and broad forehead, a firm chin, and features which, though well-marked and well-moulded, are yet delicate in outline and sensitive in expression.  Very young men seldom take to Daphne:  she lacks the desired inanity.  But she has mind, repose, and womanly tenderness.  Indeed, if she had not been my cousin, I almost think I might once have been tempted to fall in love with her.