Here Dr. Beaton began, with a face of regret, yet satisfaction, to nod his head, with that offensive air of “I knew it all the time,” which is more exasperating than any other form of remark.
“The Highcourt stamp,” continued Trevanion, peremptorily, “and a direction written in my poor brother’s hand.”
“In your brother’s hand!”
“I thought I should surprise you,” John said, with a grim satisfaction. “I suppose it is according to the rules of the profession that so much time should have been let slip. I am very glad of it, for my part. Whatever Reginald can have had to do with the fellow—something accidental, no doubt—it would have been disagreeable to have his name mixed up— I saw the man myself trying to make himself agreeable to Rosalind.”
“To Miss Trevanion?” cried the doctor, with evident dismay. “Why, I thought—”
“Oh, it was a very simple matter,” said John, interrupting again. “He laid down some planks for her to cross the floods. And the recompense she gave him was to doubt whether he was a gentleman, because he had paid her a compliment—which I must say struck me as a very modest attempt at a compliment.”
“It was a tremendous piece of presumption,” said the doctor, with Scotch warmth. “I don’t doubt Miss Rosalind’s instinct was right, and that he was no gentleman. He had not the air of it, in my opinion—a limp, hollow-eyed, phthisical subject.”
“But consumption does not spare even the cream of society, doctor. It appears he must have had warning of the coming danger, for he seems to have got away.”
“I thought as much!” said Dr. Beaton. “I never expected to see more of him after— Oh, I thought as much!”
John Trevanion eyed the doctor with a look that was almost threatening, but he said nothing more. Dr. Beaton, too, was on the eve of departure; his occupation was gone, and his tête-à-tête with John Trevanion not very agreeable to either of them. But the parting was friendly on all sides. “The doctor do express himself very nicely,” Dorrington said, when he joined the company in the housekeeper’s room, after having solemnly served the two gentlemen at dinner, “about his stay having been agreeable and all that—just what a gentleman ought to say. There are medical men of all kinds, just as there are persons of all sorts in domestic service; and the doctor, he’s one of the right sort.”