gazing at it thoughtfully. "Mademoiselle, the
doctor say to me the other day, when the Captain go, I can take a long
what-you-call holiday. I can go to my people in Cognac a month, two
months, maybe more. He say he not sure what he will do; perhaps he go
away from Cannes."

"You mean he might give up his practice?" asked Esther, astonished.

Jacques shrugged expressively.

"I know nothing. He always say he hope one day to stop work again, I
cannot tell you. And then he speak yesterday to the Captain and say he
think he will--how do you say?--_sous-louer_ the house."

"Sub-let the house! Then he does mean to go away. How extraordinary!"

"To you, mademoiselle, not to me. I know the doctor for a long time.
_Il fait toujours des betises!_"

"Well--I'm glad to have seen you, Jacques. Good-bye and good luck."

She leaned out of the car and shook his hand warmly, an attention which
delighted Jacques's soul beyond measure.

"_Au revoir, mademoiselle! Au revoir, monsieur! Bonne sante!_"

When they had gone on again Roger remarked:

"Your Sartorius is a queer card. No one, to look at him, would think
he could be so temperamental."

"Yet he's first and foremost a scientist. I believe he would almost
starve in order to pursue his work in the laboratory."

The thought in her mind was that the Cliffords must indeed be paying
the doctor well if he could afford to drop his practice in this casual
fashion. A few weeks was one thing, a matter of months was another.
In spite of what Jacques had always told her, she felt there must be
some mistake about it. Perhaps it merely meant the doctor was thinking
of moving to another part of Cannes; she had more or less wondered why
he had chosen the Route de Grasse.

As for Lady Clifford, whether her symptoms were prompted by hysteria or
not, she kept her bed for two days, frequently visited by the doctor.
On the afternoon of the third she emerged from her room, still pale and
wan, but otherwise quite herself. The anti-toxin had done its work,
the typhoid was routed. As she went about passive and subdued, with
pensive eyes and a pathetic droop to her mouth, it was hard to believe
in her insane outburst of only a few days ago. One would not have
believed it possible that she could work herself up into such a rage
over a trifling matter. Indeed, to Esther at least, the cause of Lady
Clifford's fury seemed so inadequate that more than once she found
herself turning