"It might present a pretty point for the lawyers. If you had chosen to repudiate the connection, it might not have been easy to establish. Nannie and I can hold our tongues--that I beg you to believe. The occasion for a wife having passed, he might have preferred to hold his too." "Would he rather be unmarried?" "That is not a matter on which I should care to positively pronounce." "Then why was he so eager?" "I explained at the time. He had made a will in favour of a certain person, which he desired to render ineffective; marriage makes null and void any will which a man may have previously made; under the circumstances that seemed to be the easiest and the shortest way out of it. As matters have turned out the measure seems to have been a little drastic, since he can now, if he chooses, make a dozen new wills each day." "Is he so far recovered as that?" The doctor seemed desirous to consider before he answered. He put up his long, thin hand to stroke his bristly chin. Moving a few steps, he leaned over the foot of the bed, and from that point attentively regarded her. "Madam, I do not wish to trouble you with the medical names of all the complicated diseases with which Mr. Grahame is afflicted. I am not sure that I am myself acquainted with them all; some of them puzzle even me. Among other troubles he is paralysed. He cannot move hand or foot of his own volition, or crook a finger. Again, straying into the paths of prophecy, I dare assert that he never will be able to. He has his senses--after a fashion; he is sane--also after a fashion. That is, he is legally capable of making a will, or of taking a wife. But if he desires to affix his signature to a document a pen will have to be placed between his fingers, his hand will have to be guided. To that extent he has recovered, beyond that he almost certainly will never go." "But he is not dying?" "No, madam, he is not dying." "Nor likely to die?" "No office would insure his life for four-and-twenty hours, though it is quite within the range of possibility that the breath may continue in his body for years. Such cases have been known. Some people death takes at the first call; some have to be called again and again; some seem to go beyond the portal and yet return. Cuthbert Grahame is one of them. He'll not go till death is very much in earnest; when that will be I cannot say. I mistook death's mood the other night--the oldest of us make such mistakes at times. In this case my mistake may seem to press a little hardly upon you." She looked at him askance. There was a whimsical gravity in his tone which was a little beyond her comprehension, a something which was almost sympathetic. She changed the subject; a fresh intonation had come into her voice also. "I wish you'd look at my foot. It's better. I think that before long I'll be able to get about again as usual. I want to very much; it's awful being a prisoner in bed. I'm not good at keeping still."