"

"There!"

In a pause of breathless silence--with the eyes of every person in the
room eagerly fastened on him--the surgeon lifted his hand and pointed to
Geoffrey Delamayn.

CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH.

TOUCHING IT.

As soon as the general stupefaction was allayed, the general incredulity
asserted itself as a matter of course.

The man who first declared that "seeing" was "believing" laid his finger
(whether he knew it himself or not) on one of the fundamental follies
of humanity. The easiest of all evidence to receive is the evidence
that requires no other judgment to decide on it than the judgment of
the eye--and it will be, on that account, the evidence which humanity is
most ready to credit, as long as humanity lasts. The eyes of every
body looked at Geoffrey; and the judgment of every body decided, on
the evidence there visible, that the surgeon must be wrong. Lady Lundie
herself (disturbed over her dinner invitations) led the general protest.
"Mr. Delamayn in broken health!" she exclaimed, appealing to the better
sense of her eminent medical guest. "Really, now, you can't expect us to
believe that!"

Stung into action for the second time by the startling assertion of
which he had been made the subject, Geoffrey rose, and looked the
surgeon, steadily and insolently, straight in the face.

"Do you mean what you say?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You point me out before all these people--"

"One moment, Mr. Delamayn. I admit that I may have been wrong in
directing the general attention to you. You have a right to complain of
my having answered too publicly the public challenge offered to me by
your friends. I apologize for having done that. But I don't retract a
single word of what I have said on the subject of your health."

"You stick to it that I'm a broken-down man?"

"I do."

"I wish you were twenty years younger, Sir!"

"Why?"

"I'd ask you to step out on the lawn there and I'd show you whether I'm
a broken-down man or not."

Lady Lundie looked at her brother-in-law. Sir Patrick instantly
interfered.

"Mr. Delamayn," he said, "you were invited here in the character of a
gentleman, and you are a guest in a lady's house."

"No! no!" said the surgeon, good humoredly. "Mr. Delamayn is using a
strong argument, Sir Patrick--and that is all. If I _were_ twenty years
younger," he went on, addressing himself to Geoffrey, "and if I _did_
step out on the lawn with you, the result wouldn't affect the ques