"My dear Hawkehurst—"
"My dear Sheldon, for pity's sake don't treat me as if I were a woman or a child. Let me know my fate. If—if—this, the worst, most bitter of all calamities God's hand—raised against me in punishment of past sins, sinned lightly and recklessly, in the days when my heart had no stake in the game of destiny—can inflict upon me; if this deadly sorrow is bearing down upon me, let me meet it like a man. Let me die with my eyes uncovered. O, my dearest, my fondest, redeeming angel of my ill-spent life! have you been only a supernal visitant, after all, shining on me for a little while, to depart when your mission of redemption is accomplished?"
"Powers above!" thought Mr. Sheldon, "what nonsense these sentimental magazine-writers can talk!"
He was in nowise melted by the lover's anguish, though it was very real. Such a grief as this was outside the circle in which his thoughts revolved. This display of grief was unpleasant to him. It grated painfully upon his nerves, as some of poor Tom Halliday's little speeches had done of old, when the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his deathbed; and the young man's presence and the young man's anxiety were alike inconvenient.
"Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon," Valentine said presently, with suppressed intensity. "Is there any hope for my darling, any hope?"
Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied to this question. He pursed-up his lips and bent his brows with the same air of business-like deliberation that he might have assumed while weighing the relative merits of the first and second debenture bonds of some doubtful railway company.
"You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst," he said at last. "If you ask me plainly whether I like the turn which Charlotte's illness has taken within the last few weeks, I must tell you frankly, I do not. There is a persistent want of tone—a visible decay of vital power—which, I must confess, has caused me some uneasiness. You see, the fact is, there is a radical weakness of constitution—as Miss Paget, a very sensible girl and acute observer—herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary weakness; and against this medicine is sometimes unavailing. You need apprehend no neglect on my part, Hawkehurst; all that can possibly be done is being done. Dr. Doddleson's instructions are carefully obeyed, and—"
"Is this Dr. Doddleson competent to grapple with the case?" asked
Valentine; "I never heard of him as a great man."
"That fact proves how little you know of the medical profession."
"I know nothing of it; I have had no need for doctors in my life. And you think this Dr. Doddleson really clever?"