"Her heart!" echoed Sir Alexander, looking up now as if a little aroused.
"Dear me, yes; her heart; I didn't say her liver. Is it sound, Pepps?"
"It's sound, for anything I know to the contrary. I never suspected anything the matter with her heart."
"Then you are a fool!" retorted the complimentary dowager.
Sir Alexander's temperament was remarkably calm. Nothing could rouse him out of his tame civility, which had been taken more than once for obsequiousness. The countess-dowager had patronized him in earlier years, when he was not a great man, or had begun to dream of becoming one.
"Don't you recollect I once consulted you on the subject—what's your memory good for? She was a girl then, of fourteen or so; and you were worth fifty of what you are now, in point of discernment."
The oracle carried his thoughts back, and really could not recollect it. "Ahem! yes; and the result was—was—"
"The result was that you said the heart had nothing the matter with it, and I said it had," broke in the impatient dowager.
"Ah, yes, madam, I remember. Pray, have you reason to suspect anything wrong now?"
"That's what you ought to have ascertained, Pepps, not me. What d'you mean by your neglect? What, I ask, does she lie in bed for? If her heart's right, there's nothing more the matter with her than there is with you."