his face.

"I do not like your partner," he said; "don't send him again. He knows
nothing about his business."

He spoke with all the haughtiness of a millionnaire to a country
practitioner. I could hardly refrain from smiling as I thought of Jack's
disgust and indignation.

"As for that," I replied, "most probably neither of us will visit you
again. Dr. Lowry will return to-morrow, and you will be in his hands
once more."

"No!" he cried, with a passionate urgency in his tone--"no, Martin
Dobree; you said if any man in London could cure me, it was yourself. I
cannot leave myself in any other hands. I demand from you the fulfilment
of your words. If what you said is true, you can no more leave me to the
care of another physician, than you could leave a fellow-creature to
drown without doing your utmost to save him. I refuse to be given up to
Dr. Lowry."

"But it is by no means a parallel ease," I argued; "you were under his
treatment before, and I have no reason whatever to doubt his skill. Why
should you feel safer in my hands than in his?"

"Well!" he said, with a sneer, "if Olivia were alive, I dare scarcely
have trusted you, could I? But you have nothing to gain by my death, you
know; and I have so much faith in you, in your skill, and your honor,
and your conscientiousness--if there be any such qualities in the
world--that I place myself unfalteringly under your professional care.
Shake hands upon it, Martin Dobree."

In spite of my repugnance, I could not resist taking his offered hand.
His eyes were fastened upon me with something of the fabled fascination
of a serpent's. I knew instinctively that he would have the power, and
use it, of probing every wound he might suspect in me to the quick. Yet
he interested me; and there was something not entirely repellent to me
about him. Above all for Olivia's sake, should we find her still living,
I was anxious to study his character. It might happen, as it does
sometimes, that my honor and straight-forwardness might prove a match
for his crafty shrewdness.

"There," he said, exultantly, "Martin Dobree pledges himself to cure
me.--Carry, you are the witness of it. If I die, he has been my assassin
as surely as if he had plunged a stiletto into me."

"Nonsense!" I answered; "it is not in my power to heal or destroy. I
simply pledge myself to use every means I know of for your recovery."

"Which comes to the same thing," he replied; "for, mark you, I will be
th