"I will take no secondhand information," he thought; "I will hear this man's opinion from his own lips."
He went round to the front of the house directly the droning had ceased, and was in the way when Dr. Doddleson and Mr. Sheldon came out of the rose-hung porch.
"If you have no objection," he said to Mr. Sheldon, "I should like to ask
Dr. Doddleson a few questions."
"I have no objection," replied the stockbroker; "but it is really altogether such an unusual thing, and I doubt if Dr. Doddleson will consent to—"
And here he cast a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who should say, "Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand so entirely unwarranted by precedent?"
Dowager Doddleson was eminently good-natured.
"And this is our sweet young friend's fiancé," he said; "dear me—dee-ar me!"
And then he looked at Valentine with bland pale-blue eyes that twinkled behind his gold-framed spectacles; while Valentine was taking his measure, so far as the measure of any man's moral and intellectual force can be taken by the eyes of another man. "And this is the man who is chosen to snatch my darling from the jaws of death!" he said to himself, with burning rage in his heart, while the amiable physician repeated blandly:
"And this is our sweet young patient's fiancé. Dee-ar me, how very interesting!"
The three men strolled round to the garden behind the house, Mr. Sheldon close at the physician's elbow.