ere is the patient?" asked the doctor, rising like a man who knows
the value of time.

"This way, monsieur," said Godefroid, preceding him to show the way.

The Jew examined with a shrewd and suspicious eye the places he passed
through, giving them the keen, rapid glance of a spy; he saw all the
horrors of poverty through the door of the room in which the grandfather
and the grandson lived; for, unfortunately, Monsieur Bernard had gone
in to change his clothes before entering his daughter's room, and in his
haste to open the outer door to the doctor, he had forgotten to close
that of his lair.

He bowed in a stately manner to Halpersohn, and opened the door of his
daughter's room cautiously.

"Vanda, my child, here is the doctor," he said.

Then he stood aside to allow Halpersohn, who kept on his bear-skin
pelisse, to pass him. The Jew was evidently surprised at the luxury of
the room, which in this quarter, and more especially in this house, was
an anomaly; but his surprise only lasted for an instant, for he had
seen among German and Russian Jews many instances of the same contrast
between apparent misery and hoarded wealth. As he walked from the door
to the bed he kept his eye on the patient, and the moment he reached her
he said in Polish:--

"You are a Pole?"

"No, I am not; my mother was."

"Whom did your grandfather, Colonel Tarlowski, marry?"

"A Pole."

"From what province?"

"A Soboleska, of Pinsk."

"Very good; monsieur is your father?"

"Yes."

"Monsieur," he said, turning to the old man; "your wife--"

"Is dead;" said Monsieur Bernard.

"Was she very fair?" said Halpersohn, showing a slight impatience at
being interrupted.

"Here is her portrait," said Monsieur Bernard, unhooking from the wall a
handsome frame which enclosed several fine miniatures.

Halpersohn felt the head and handled the hair of the patient while he
looked at the portrait of Vanda Tarlowska, born Countess Sobolewska.

"Relate to me the symptoms of your illness," he said, placing himself
on the sofa and looking fixedly at Vanda during the twenty minutes the
history, given alternately by the father and daughter, lasted.

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-eight."

"Ah! good!" he cried, rising; "I will answer for the cure. Mind, I
do not say that I can restore the use of her legs; but cured of the
disease, that she shall be. Only, I must have her in a private hospital
under my own eye."

"But, monsieur, my daughter c