And when this was passed would she be quite well again?
Yes. In all possible likelihood under Heaven, quite well again.
It would leave no blemish in her life? No weak place? She would be as well as ever?
Well, that was asking a doctor to say a great deal, but it was probable, highly probable, she would be quite as well as if this had never happened. The key to her recovery lay in the one word, Quiet. After quiet came careful nurture and, a long way from the second of these, drugs. But recollect, Quiet.
Hanbury took up the prescription and hastened off with it.
The poor girl so sensitive and fragile! It was a mercy this illness came upon her here. How would it have fared with her down in that lonely Eltham House to which she had taken such a dislike? Why, it would have killed her.
What an exquisite creature she was, and so soft and gentle in her ways. It was fortunate this illness had not overtaken her in Eltham House, or in Grimsby Street, for that matter, because the street was detestable, and to be ill in lodgings must be much worse than to be ill in a public hospital, for in hospital there was every appliance and attendance, and in lodgings only noise, and bustle, and grumbling. It was dreadful to think of being sick in lodgings. And now Mrs. Grace and her grand-daughter were poor.
How horrible it would be to think of this girl lying stricken in that other house, and requiring first of all quiet, and then cherishing, and being able to get neither! It was dreadful to picture such things. And fancy, if these poor ladies had not enough money for a good doctor and what the poor weak child wanted! Fancy if they could not pay their rent and were obliged to leave. Oh! how fortunate it was he had come across them so soon, and how strange to think that Leigh had been the means of first bringing them together. He owed that good turn to Leigh.
On his way back from the druggist he reverted to the past of Leigh:
"Yes, I owed the introduction to him. I freely forgive him now. Indeed, I don't know what I have to forgive him of. He did not send or write that paragraph to the papers. He did not even write it, as far as I know, and although he was rough and rude, and levied a kind of blackmail on me, the price he asked me was not disgraceful from his point of view. If I had met him under happy circumstances, I might have brought him to a Thursday at Curzon Street. He was interesting, with his alchemy and clock and omniscience and insolence and intellectual swagger. Of course, I did not at the time know he was in treaty with a fence. According to his own account he never committed himself in that quarter, and as he had no need to tell me of that transaction at all, I daresay he kept pretty near the truth. How strange that when he lost his clock, he must straightway get a confidant! I wonder is there any truth in his own prophecy about his health?