Cousin
Mandeville's stare had not escaped his notice.
Mandeville hesitated; he was very much annoyed; he liked his money, if
not himself, to be respected. But business is business, to say nothing
of blood being thicker than water.
"Oh, well, I'll do it for you," he agreed with lofty benevolence.
Quisante laughed. He would have covered his own retreat with much the
same device.
The riches then were on the way; Quisante had a far-seeing eye, and Aunt
Maria's five hundred was to imagination already prolific of thousands. A
hansom carried him up to Harley Street; he had been there three months
before and had been told to come again in three weeks. The punishment
for his neglect was a severe verdict. "No liquor, no tobacco, and three
months' immediate and complete rest." Quisante laughed--very much as he
had at his kinsman in the City. Both doctor and stock-jobber showed such
a curious ignorance of the conditions under which his life had to be
lived and of his reasons for caring to live it.
"What's the matter then?" he asked.
The doctor became very technical, though not quite unreserved; the heart
and the stomach were in some unholy conspiracy; this was as much as
Quisante really understood.
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