Josephine admitted as much very frankly. “There you see,” said the doctor. “Well, then, you must help me in this case. And this time I promise to treat your art with more respect.” “And pray who is it she is to read now?” asked the baroness. “Who should it be but my poor patient? He puzzles me. I never knew a patient so faint-hearted.” “A soldier faint-hearted!” exclaimed the baroness. “To be sure these men that storm cities, and fire cannon, and cut and hack one another with so much spirit, are poor creatures compared with us when they have to lie quiet and suffer.” The doctor walked the room in great excitement. “It is not his wound that is killing him, there’s something on his mind. You, Josephine, with your instincts do help me: do pray, for pity’s sake, throw off that sublime indifference you have manifested all along to this man’s fate.” “She has not,” cried the baroness, firing up. “Did I not see her lining his dressing-gown for him? and she inspects everything that he eats: do you not?” “Yes, mother.” She then suggested in a faltering voice that time would cure the patient, and time alone. “Time! you speak as if time was a quality: time is only a measure of events, favorable or unfavorable; it kills as many as it cures.” “Why, you surely would not imply his life is in any danger?” This was the baroness. “Madame, if the case was not grave, should I take this unusual step? I tell you if some change does not take place soon, he will be a dead man in another fortnight. That is all TIME will do for him.” The baroness uttered an exclamation of pity and distress. Josephine put her hand to her bosom, and a creeping horror came over her, and then a faintness. She sat working mechanically, and turning like ice within. After a few minutes of this, she rose with every appearance of external composure and left the room. In the passage she met Rose coming hastily towards the salon laughing: the first time she had laughed this many a day. Oh, what a contrast between the two faces that met there--the one pale and horror stricken, the other rosy and laughing! “Well, dear, at last I am paid for all my trouble, and yours, by a discovery; he never drinks a drop of his medicine; he pours it into the ashes under the grate; I caught him in the fact.” “Then this is too much: I can resist no longer. Come with me,” said Josephine doggedly. “Where?” “To him.” CHAPTER XII. Josephine paused on the landing, and laid her hand on Rose’s shoulder. It was so cold it made Rose shudder, and exacted a promise from her not to contradict a word she should say to Camille. “I do not go to him for my pleasure, but for his life,” she said; “I must deceive him and save him; and then let me lie down and die.” “Oh, that the wretch had never been born!” cried Rose, in despair. But she gave the required promise, and offered to go and tell Camille Josephine was coming to visit him.