“Then it will be all the better medicine.”
He made both mistress and maid eat the thin slices of beef and drink a glass of champagne.
While they were thus fortifying themselves he wrote his address on some stamped envelopes, and gave them to Lady Bassett, and told her she had better write to him at once if anything occurred. “You must also write to me if you really cannot get to see your husband. Then I will come down myself, with the public press at my back. But I am sure that will not be necessary in Dr. Suaby's asylum. He is a better Christian than I am, confound him for it! You went too soon; your husband had been agitated by the capture; Suaby was away; Salter had probably applied what he imagined to be soothing remedies, leeches—a blister—morphia. Result, the patient was so much worse than he was before they touched him that Salter was ashamed to let you see him. Having really excited him, instead of soothing him, Sawbones Salter had to pretend that you would excite him. As if creation contained any mineral, drug simple, leech, Spanish fly, gadfly, or showerbath, so soothing as a loving wife is to a man in affliction. New reading of an old song:
'If the heart of a man is oppressed with cares,
It makes him much worse when a woman appears.'
“Go to-morrow; you will see him. He will be worse than he was; but not much. Somebody will have told him that his wife put him in there—”
“Oh! oh!”
“And he won't have believed it. His father was a Bassett; his mother a Le Compton; his great-great-great-grandmother was a Rolfe: there is no cur's blood in him. After the first shock he will have found the spirit and dignity of a gentleman to sustain adversity: these men of fashion are like that; they are better steel than women—and writers.”
When he had said this he indicated by his manner that he thought he had exhausted the subject, and himself.
Lady Bassett rose and said, “Then, sir, I will take my leave; and oh! I am sorry I have not your eloquent pen or your eloquent tongue to thank you. You have interested yourself in a stranger—you have brought the power of a great mind to bear on our distress. I came here a widow—now I feel a wife again. Your good words have warmed my very heart. I can only pray God to bless you, sir.”
“Pray say no more, madam,” said Mr. Rolfe, hastily. “A gentleman cannot be always writing lies; an hour or two given to truth and justice is a wholesome diversion. At all events, don't thank me till my advice has proved worth it.”