Apart from his profession, he thought very lightly of himself. Since Lilia died he had merged the man in the physician; if one had told him people liked or disliked him as the man, without reference to the professional healer, he would scarcely have believed it.
He put the note into his breast-pocket—he was just going to deliver a lecture—said a few words to Ralph, and, stopping the carriage at a telegraph office, wired “With pleasure” to Lady Forwood.
He lectured brilliantly that day. The students were astonished at the youthful enthusiasm of their ordinarily calm and logical professor.
Returning, he found a letter from Mrs. Mervyn, who was anxious to keep him up to his new good resolutions. Mrs. Mervyn offered to come to town any day and “do his shopping for him.”
He talked of his idea of embellishing the Pinewood to Ralph that evening.
“You both, you and granny, have more artistic taste than I have,” he said to his son. “Suppose I were to give you carte blanche to refurnish the house—both houses, this is a great deal too shabby—and I will not grumble at the bills?”
Ralph acceded to his father’s suggestion joyfully, as he invariably did. But in private he wondered, and pondered. This man, all elation one day and moody abstraction the next, was not the father he had loved and revered. He was metamorphosed.
Sir David Forwood lived in one of the fashionable squares. When Hugh’s carriage drove up, it had to wait—another equipage was “setting down” at the hall-door, where there was an awning.
“A large party?” he asked the footman who took his hat.
“My lady receives after dinner, this evening,” said the man.