This is the
clergyman, and you are the commentator--he! he! And so now let us go
back from divinity to medicine. I repeat" (this was the first time she
had said it) "that my other doctors give me real prescriptions, written
in hieroglyphics. You can't look at them without feeling there MUST be
something in them."

An angry spot rose on Christopher's cheek, but he only said, "And are
your other doctors satisfied with the progress your disorder is making
under their superintendence?"

"Perfectly! Papa, tell him what they say, and I'll find him their
prescriptions." She went to a drawer, and rummaged, affecting not to
listen.

Lusignan complied. "First of all, sir, I must tell you they are
confident it is not the lungs, but the liver."

"The what!" shouted Christopher.

"Ah!" screamed Rosa. "Oh, don't!--bawling!"

"And don't you screech," said her father, with a look of misery and
apprehension impartially distributed on the resounding pair.

"You must have misunderstood them," murmured Staines, in a voice that
was now barely audible a yard off. "The hemorrhage of a bright red
color, and expelled without effort or nausea?"

"From the liver--they have assured me again and again," said Lusignan.

Christopher's face still wore a look of blank amazement, till Rosa
herself confirmed it positively.

Then he cast a look of agony upon her, and started up in a passion,
forgetting once more that his host abhorred the sonorous. "Oh, shame!
shame!" he cried, "that the noble profession of medicine should be
disgraced by ignorance such as this." Then he said, sternly, "Sir, do
not mistake my motives; but I decline to have anything further to do
with this case, until those two gentlemen have been relieved of it; and,
as this is very harsh, and on my part unprecedented, I will give you
one reason out of many I COULD give you. Sir, there is no road from the
liver to the throat by which blood can travel in this way, defying
the laws of gravity; and they knew, from the patient, that no strong
expellent force has ever been in operation. Their diagnosis, therefore,
implies agnosis, or ignorance too great to be forgiven. I will not share
my patient with two gentlemen who know so little of medicine, and know
nothing of anatomy, which is the A B C of medicine. Can I see their
prescriptions?"

These were handed to him. "Good heavens!" said he, "have you taken all
these?"

"Most of them."

"Why, then you have drunk about two gallo