“Phillips!” exclaimed Mrs Hardon excitedly.
“There we are again,” cried Matt; “who’d be without a good partner?”
“But how do you know?” said Septimus.
“I remember in your mother’s last illness,” said Mrs Septimus, “that she told me how she longed for her old doctor, for she felt sure Mr Thomas Hardon did not understand her complaint; and that was the first cause of disagreement between your father and Dr Hardon. I heard your father tell him afterwards that he had killed his Sister, and to leave the house.”
“But the name?” said Septimus, anxious to change the conversation.
“Phillips—the same as my own; and that was why it made an impression upon my memory.”
“Talk about cards to play, sir!” cried Matt, “why, that’s winning: your partner has played the leading trump.”
Septimus Hardon rose from his seat to begin anxiously pacing up and down the room. He could see plainly enough the value of the position he was nerving himself to fight for, but he shrank, as he had shrunk again and again, from the exposure certain, whether he succeeded or not. Vacillating in the extreme, he was at one time telling himself that it was his duty to try and clear his mother’s fame, though the next moment would find him shrinking from the task, while his brow wrinkled up as he sighed and looked from face to face, lastly on that of old Matt, who, having relieved himself of the child, was taking snuff extravagantly, and chuckling and rubbing his hands in anticipation of the coming triumph.
“Now, sir,” he said upon catching the troubled man’s eye, “about this doctor.”
“Dead before now,” said Septimus. “Allowing him to have been quite young for a doctor, he would be eighty now, and how few men reach that age!”