Now, whenever he saw the Lady Van Tyne, his thoughts involuntarily wandered back to the summer day when, with consternation in her face, Lady Montfort had called upon him with the vivacious Isabel to secure his immediate and most careful services.
The good lady readily accepted his verdict and in all innocence prepared her daughter for the immediate journey to America, which the imperative physician prescribed.
Little did the good woman realize that all her elaborate preparations were smiled at, more or less sadly, by her daughter and the clever physician.
For, instead of the extended trip across the ocean, Miss Isabel betook herself quietly to the private residence of the physician, and there for three months she remained under the careful surveillance of doctor and nurse.
The ruse was more than successful, inasmuch as Miss Isabel was restored to her mother, and Sir Casper's eager arms, in rapidly improving health, while the young physician's somewhat astounding fee was quietly paid by a gentleman of excellent social standing who was, moreover, the husband of one of the most charming and estimable ladies of Dr. Seward's acquaintance.
The secret had been well guarded. Now and then a dull pang of self-reproach was experienced by the physician when he remembered how indifferent he had been to the fate of the child after he had secured a home and guardianship for it. He watched it more or less interestedly for about ten years, as he also watched that other boy so singularly alike in feature but so widely different in parentage and social prospects.
The boys, at ten and eleven respectively, were as near alike as brothers, but from that time on there were changes in the adopted parents mode of life, and the child of unsanctified love vanished from his gaze forever.
Into the lives of all physicians there come many and varied episodes of private nature, but probably of all the secret games indulged in by unscrupulous human beings, that one is best remembered wherein they hold so prominent a hand.
It was little wonder, in the light of such reflections, that Dr. Seward evinced not only a slight irritability regarding his patient's hallucination, but also a most extraordinary desire to see this young man whose personal appearance was so suggestive of the Infernal Regions.