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.