There was another pause, and then Renée smiled, passed her arm round her handsome sister’s neck, and kissed her lovingly.
“Have you got John Huish very bad?” she whispered.
Gertrude’s cheeks were crimson, and the colour flushed into her neck as she flung her arms round her sister and hid her face on her breast.
Volume One—Chapter Five.
Dr Stonor’s Patient.
“The doctor at home?”
This to a quiet, sedate-looking man in livery, who opened the door of one of the serious-looking houses in Finsbury Circus, where, upon a very shiny brass plate, were in Roman letters the words “Dr Stonor.” There was not much in those few black letters, but many a visitor had gone up the carefully-whitened steps, gazed at them, stepped down again with a curious palpitation of the heart, and walked right round the Circus two or three times to gain composure enough before once more ascending the steps and knocking at the door.
There had been cases—not a few—where visitors had spent weeks in making up their minds to go to Dr Stonor, and had reached his doorstep only to hurry back home quite unable to face him, and then suffer in secret perhaps for months to come.