"Ah, well, perhaps," he said. "We are evidently dealing with a nature full of surprises." He pursed up his mouth and eyed me attentively. "My dear boy," he said at last, "I think I see your difficulty. You had better turn this case over to me altogether."
"Thank you," I answered. "That is what I should like to have suggested."
"Then send the lady up to town, and I will do my best for her."
CHAPTER XV.
Sir Shadwell Rock was exactly the kind of man Evadne had had in her mind, I felt sure, when she spoke of the peculiar influence which distinguished men of my profession exercise upon their patients. He was a man of taking manners to begin with, sympathetic, cultivated, humane; and, I need hardly add, scrupulously conscientious and exact. I could confide her to his care with the most perfect reliance upon his kindness, as well as upon his discretion and skill—if she would consent to consult him at all; but that was a little difficulty which had still to be got over. I anticipated some opposition, because I felt sure she had not realized that there was anything threatening to be serious in her case, and would therefore see no necessity for further advice. This made the arrangement difficult. It would not do to arouse any apprehension about her own state of mind; but how to induce her to go to London to consult an eminent specialist without doing so was the question. Had Lady Adeline been at home the suggestion would have come best from her, but in her absence there was nobody to make it except that impossible Colonel Colquhoun. If he chose to order Evadne to consult Sir Shadwell Rock, I knew she would do so at once, for she never opposed him, and he was so apt to be unreasonable and capricious that she would probably not think that the order signified much. But the further question was, would he give it? After I had finished my morning's work, I drove to the depôt to see. The men were on parade when I entered the barrack square. They were drawn up in line, and the first thing I saw was Colonel Colquhoun himself prancing about on his charger, and not in the most amiable mood possible, I imagined, from the way he was blackguarding the men. He sat his horse well, and was a fine soldierlike man in uniform, and a handsome man too, of the martial order, when his bald head was hidden by his cocked hat, and his blond moustache had a chance; the sort of man to take a woman's fancy if not the kind of character to keep her regard.
An unhappy old mounted major had got into trouble just as I came up. His palfrey was an easy ambler, but he was the sort of old gentleman who would not have been safe in a rocking chair with his sword drawn and his chief complimenting him.
"You ride like a damned tailor, sir," Colonel Colquhoun was thundering at him just as I drove up.
An officer in undress uniform, Captain Bartlet, and Brigade Surgeon James, who was in mufti, were standing at an open window in the ante-room, and I joined them there, and looked out at the parade.
"I don't know how you fellows stand that kind of thing, and before the men, too," I remarked, à propos of a fresh volley of abuse from Colonel Colquhoun.
"Oh! by Jove! we've got to stand it, many of us, for weighty considerations quite apart from our personal dignity," Captain Bartlet rejoined. "A man with a wife and five children depending upon him will swallow a lot for their sake. It would be easy enough to answer him, but self-interest keeps us quiet—a deuced sight oftener than discipline, by the way. However," he added cheerfully, "all C.O.'s are not so bad as that brute out there, nor the half of them for the matter of that."