"You did not mention my name?"
"Dora! As though I should converse about you to a stranger! No, my dear. I merely told so much about Mr. Edermont, prescribed for the lady's nerves, and informed her host and Mr. Pallant that she would be all right to-morrow."
"And who is Mr. Pallant?"
"Did I not mention his name? Oh, he is another guest of Sir Harry's. He left the message that I was to call and see Lady Burville."
"Indeed. Why did not Sir Harry call in his own doctor?"
"Faith! that is more than I can say," replied Scott. "All the better for me that he did not. But how this Mr. Pallant found me out I do not know. It is my impression that, hearing he was riding into Canterbury, Lady Burville asked him privately to send her a doctor, and as he chanced on my door-plate first, he called on me. A lucky accident for a struggling practitioner, eh, Dora?"
"No doubt--if it was an accident," said she dryly. "What is this Mr. Pallant like, Allen?"
"A red-haired, blue-eyed, supercilious beast. I disliked him at sight. Rather a shame on my part, seeing that he has done me a good turn."
By this time they had arrived at the outskirts of Chillum, and alighted before a massive gate of wood set in a high brick wall, decorated at the top with broken glass.
The green spires of poplar-trees rose over the summit of this wall, and further back could be seen the red-tiled gable of a house. Opposite the gates on the other side of the dusty white road there was a small cottage buried in a plantation of fir-trees. An untidy garden extended from its front-door to the quickset hedge which divided the grounds from the highway, and the house had a desolate and solitary look, as though rarely inhabited.