"
"Well, then," the Doctor said hotly, "I regard you as an ass." And
without another word he walked off in great anger.
For the next four or five days Isobel was in a high state of fever;
it passed off as the Doctor had predicted it would do, but left
her very weak and languid. Another week and she was about again.
"What is Mr. Bathurst going to do?" she asked the Doctor the first
day she was up on a couch.
"I don't know what he is going to do, my dear," he said irritably;
"my opinion of Bathurst is that he is a fool."
"Oh, Doctor, how can you say so!" she exclaimed in astonishment;
"why, what has he done?"
"It isn't what he has done, but what he won't do, my dear. Here he
is in love with a young woman in every way suitable, and who is
ready to say yes whenever he asks her, and he won't ask, and is
not going to ask, because of a ridiculous crotchet he has got in
his head."
Isobel flushed and then grew pale.
"What is the crotchet?" she asked, in a low tone, after being silent
for some time.
"What do you think, my dear? He is more disgusted with himself than
ever."
"Not about that nervousness, surely," Isobel said, "after all he
has done and the way he has risked his life? Surely that cannot be
troubling him?"
"It is, my dear; not so much on the general as on a particular
ground. He insists that by jumping out of the boat when that fire
began, he has done for himself altogether."
"But what could he have done, Doctor?"
"That's what I ask him, my dear.
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