“Perhaps?” Georgia sat upright, and her eyes flashed. “Major North, you conceived a prejudice against me the first time you saw me in the spring, and you spared no pains to make it evident. Thinking that you might possibly imagine yourself to have a just cause of complaint against me, on account of what happened long ago, although I should have thought it wiser and more dignified for both of us to forget the circumstance, I have done my best, for Mab’s sake, to treat you as I should wish to be able to treat her brother. I had begun to hope that you also had recognised the advantage of continuing our acquaintance on this footing, and I have been in the habit lately of speaking to you more freely than I should have cared to do to a declared enemy. In return, you do your utmost to humiliate me in the presence of Mr Kustendjian and Mr Anstruther. You have taught me a lesson; I confess that I have taken some time in learning it, but I shall not make mistakes in future.” “Then you won’t even let us be friends?” “I think it will be better not, Major North. The honour of your friendship is rather a trying one for the recipient; a stranger might even mistake it for enmity. It will relieve you of the unpleasant necessity of showing your friendship if we remain henceforth on the footing of mere acquaintances.” “Have a little pity for me, Georgie.” If Dick had meant to make Georgia look at him, he had succeeded now. The glance she gave him withered him into silence. “You forget yourself, Major North. At least, I have never given you reason to insult me.” CHAPTER XIII. A PROFESSIONAL SUMMONS. The long hours of another day and night dragged slowly away, and Sir Dugald’s condition remained unchanged. The sight of her husband lying on his bed with half-closed eyes, speechless and incapable of changing his position, moved Lady Haigh to a fervent hope that Georgia’s conjecture as to his partial consciousness of what passed around him might not be true. To know himself absolutely powerless, to perceive that things were going wrong but to be unable to rectify them, she could imagine no keener torment for a man of his stamp. If he continued in this state, she said to herself remorsefully, as she administered the liquids which were the only nourishment he could swallow, she would be inclined to allow Georgia to have her way, in spite of the misgivings of Stratford and North, for nothing could be worse than this living death. Even now, “If you could only tell me you were sure it was poison, Georgie dear,” she said, “I would put him into your hands unreservedly; but as it is, the risk is too fearful. He is all I have, you know.” And although Georgia regretted the decision, it did not affect her as the opposition of the men had done, for she knew that Lady Haigh would have withstood any male doctor with exactly the same pertinacity under the circumstances.