“She may want all my help,” he thought. “Poor girl! Bah! Rubbish! A widow of thirty. Girl indeed! Well, I hope she’s very bad. It will be a lesson to her—bring her to her senses. What an idiot I am! Here, my hand’s trembling, and I’m all in a nervous fret. Just as if it was some one very dear to me, when all the time—When was your mistress taken ill, my man?”
“She’s kep’ her room the last fortnight, sir—not her bed; but she’s seemed going off like for months and months. Hasn’t been on a horse for a good half-year, sir, and hasn’t been at all the lady she was.”
By the time they reached the lodge-gates, which were thrown open by a woman on the watch for the returning vehicle, the doctor assured himself that he was perfectly calm and collected; but all the same there was a strange gnawing at his heart; and he turned pale at the sight of the promptitude with which the gates were opened. It seemed as if matters were known to be serious. This did not tend to make him cooler as they trotted along the beautiful avenue, and drew up at the great stone steps of the ancient ivy-grown mansion, with its magnificent view over a glorious sweep of park-land; neither did the sight of a quiet-looking butler and footman waiting to open the hall door lessen Scales’s anxiety. His lips parted to question the butler; but by an effort he restrained himself, and followed him up to a room at the top of the broad old oaken staircase, before whose door a heavy curtain was drawn.
“Doctor Scales,” said the butler, in a low voice; and as the doctor advanced with the door closing behind him, it was to see that he was in a handsomely furnished boudoir; while rising from a couch placed near the open window was Lady Martlett, looking extremely agitated and pale. Her eyes seemed to have grown larger, and the roundness had begun to leave her cheeks; but there was no languor in her movement, no trace of weakness. Still she was sufficiently changed to break down the icy reserve with which the doctor had clothed himself ready for the interview.
“I will meet her with the most matter-of-fact professional politeness,” he had said as he ascended the stairs, “do the best I can for her as far as my knowledge will let me, and she shall pay me some thumping fees.—No; she shan’t,” he added the next moment. “She shall know what pride really is. I won’t touch a penny of her wretched money. She shall have my services condescendingly given, or go without.”
That is what John Scales, M.D., Edin., as he signed himself sometimes, determined upon before he saw Lady Martlett; but as soon as he was alone with her, and saw the wistful appealing look in her eyes as she turned towards him, away went the icy formality, and he half ran to her. “My dear Lady Martlett!” he exclaimed, catching her hands in his.
For answer, she burst into an hysterical fit of sobbing, sank upon her knees, and hid her face upon his hands. “I cannot bear it,” she moaned. “You are breaking my heart!”
Jenner, Thompson, Robert Barnes—the whole party of the grandees of the profession would have been utterly scandalised had they been witnesses of Doctor Scales’s treatment of his patient, though they must have afterwards confessed that it was almost miraculous in its effects. For he bent down, raised her from her knees, said the one word, “Anna!” and held her tightly to his breast. In fact so satisfactory was the treatment, that Lady Martlett’s passionate sobs grew softer, till they almost ceased, and then she slowly raised her face to look into his eyes, saying softly: “There, I am humble now. Are you content?”
“Content?” he exclaimed passionately, as he kissed her again and again. “But you are ill,” he said excitedly, “and I am forgetting everything. Why did you send for me?”
“Is pride always to keep us apart?” she said in a low tender whisper. “Have I not humbled myself enough? Yes; I am ill. I have thought lately that I should die. Will you let me die like this?”