"Too late for her to see--?"
"Too late."
The very decision of her despair--it was after all so lucid--kindled in
him a heat. "But the doctor, all the while--?"
"Tacchini? Oh he's kind. He comes. He's proud of having been approved
and coached by a great London man. He hardly in fact goes away; so that
I scarce know what becomes of his other patients. He thinks her, justly
enough, a great personage; he treats her like royalty; he's waiting on
events. But she has barely consented to see him, and, though she has
told him, generously--for she _thinks_ of me, dear creature--that he
may come, that he may stay, for my sake, he spends most of his time
only hovering at her door, prowling through the rooms, trying to
entertain me, in that ghastly saloon, with the gossip of Venice, and
meeting me, in doorways, in the sala, on the staircase, with an
agreeable intolerable smile. We don't," said Susan Shepherd, "talk of
her."
"By her request?"
"Absolutely. I don't do what she doesn't wish. We talk of the price of
provisions."
"By her request too?"
"Absolutely. She named it to me as a subject when she said, the first
time, that if it would be any comfort to me he might stay as much as we
liked."