Blind Love

He turned away and walked out of the cottage. For an hour he walked

along the road. Then he stopped and walked back. Ropes drew him; he

could no longer keep away. He felt as if something must have happened.

Possibly he would find the doctor arrested and the police waiting for

himself, to be charged as an accomplice or a principal.

He found no such thing. The doctor was in the salon, with letters and

official forms before him. He looked up cheerfully.

"My English friend," he said, "the unexpected end of this young Irish

gentleman is a very melancholy affair. I have ascertained the name of

the family solicitors and have written to them. I have also written to

his brother as the head of the house. I find also, by examination of

his papers, that his life is insured--the amount is not stated, but I

have communicated the fact of the death. The authorities--they are,

very properly, careful in such matters--have received the necessary

notices and forms: to-morrow, all legal forms having been gone through,

we bury the deceased."

"So soon?"

"So soon? In these eases of advanced pulmonary disease the sooner the

better. The French custom of speedy interment may be defended as more

wholesome than our own. On the other hand, I admit that it has its weak

points. Cremation is, perhaps, the best and only method of removing the

dead which is open to no objections except one. I mean, of course, the

chance that the deceased may have met with his death by means of

poison. But such cases are rare, and, in most instances, would be

detected by the medical man in attendance before or at the time of

death. I think we need not----My dear friend, you look ill. Are you

upset by such a simple thing as the death of a sick man? Let me

prescribe for you. A glass of brandy neat. So," he went into the salle

'a manger and returned with his medicine. "Take that. Now let us

talk." The doctor continued his conversation in a cheerfully scientific

strain, never alluding to the conspiracy or to the consequences which

might follow. He told hospital stories bearing on deaths sudden and

unexpected; some of them he treated in a jocular vein. The dead man in

the next room was a Case: he knew of many similar and equally

interesting Cases. When one has arrived at looking upon a dead man as a

Case, there is little fear of the ordinary human weakness which makes

us tremble in the awful presence of death.