Sheldon, wonder-stricken to find that the interval
was so brief between the time in which he had walked with Valentine and
Dr. Doddleson in the garden at Harold's Hill and the present moment. To
Valentine it seemed still more wonderful. What a bridgeless gulf between
yesterday morning and to-night! All his knowledge of this man Sheldon,
all the horror involved in Tom Halliday's death, had come upon him in
that brief span.
"I should like to see Dr. Doddleson's prescriptions," said Dr. Jedd, with
grave politeness.
Mr. Sheldon produced them from his pocket-book with an unshaken hand. No
change of countenance, no tremulous hand, no broken voice, betrayed his
apprehension. The one distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent,
half-mechanical tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than
in the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, he was
at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. "The chances of
defeat, so much; the chances of detection--?"
A rapid survey of his position told him what those chances were.
Detection by Dr. Jedd? Yes. That had come to him already perhaps. But
would any actual harm to him come of such detection?
He calculated the chances for and against this--and the result was in his
favour. That Dr. Jedd should form certain opinions of Miss Halliday's
case was one thing; that he should give public utterance to those
opinions was another thing.
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