"I'm a little taken aback--that's all, old friend," said the doctor; "you did not prepare me to find in my patient an old acquaintance--you did not know it, perhaps?"
"By Jove! I remember now: Charley Potts said--What an old ass I am!"
"I was called in by Potts and Ludlow, or rather called out of a gathering of the Titians, to attend Mrs. Lambert, as the landlady called her, nearly two years ago. She is not much altered--outwardly--since I left her convalescent."
"You lay a stress on 'outwardly'--what is the inner difference?"
"Simply that her health is gone, my good fellow; her whole constitution utterly shattered; her life not worth a week's purchase."
"Surely you're wrong, doctor. Up to within the last few weeks her health has been excellent."
"My dear William Bowker, I, as an amateur, meddle with your professional work; but what I do is on the surface, and the mistakes I make are so glaring, that they are recognisable instantly. You might meddle, as an amateur, with mine, and go pottering on until you'd killed half a parish, without any body suspecting you. The disease I attended Mrs.----- there! it's absurd our beating about the bush any longer--Mrs. Ludlow for was rheumatic fever, caught from exposure to cold and damp. The attack I now find left behind it, as it generally does, a strong predisposition to heart-disease, which, from what I learn from her, seems to have displayed itself in spasms and palpitations very shortly afterwards."
"From what you learn from her? She was sensible, then, when you saw her?"
"She was sensible before I left her; ay, and that's the deuce of it. Partly to deaden the pain of these attacks, partly, as she said herself just now, to escape from thought, she has had recourse to a sedative, morphia, which she has taken in large quantities. I smelt it the instant I entered her room, and found the bottle by her side. Under this influence she is deadened and comatose; but when the reaction comes--Poor creature! poor creature!" and the kind-hearted doctor shook his head sadly.
"Do you consider her in absolute danger?" asked Bowker, after a pause.