By the tenor of Lady Erstfield's telegram, however, I feared that this was not the case.
"I am very anxious about Violet. Come without delay," she wired.
I replied by telegram that I would arrive at Beeches by a late train that evening. I did so. Lady Erstfield was up. I had a long interview with her, and got all possible information with regard to my patient's state of health. I did not see Lady Violet herself, however, until the following morning.
At an early hour that day, I was taken into the pretty boudoir, where I found my patient lying on a sofa. It was a room furnished with all that taste, money, and love could suggest. Books, flowers, pictures, birds in cages, all that was gay and bright, surrounded the lovely girl who lay pale and languid on a sofa drawn close to the open window. This window commanded a perfect view of river, wood, and meadow, with a distant peep of low-lying hills against the horizon. To my eyes, accustomed to London bustle and noise, this view alone was restful and delightful.
Drawing a chair forward, I sat down by my patient and entered into a common-place talk with her. I had purposely asked Lady Erstfield to leave us, for I knew by experience that in nervous cases the patient was far more inclined to be confidential and to reply truthfully to questions when alone with the physician.
Having carefully examined Lady Violet, and made certain that she was suffering from no organic disease, it only remained for me to conclude that she was a victim to one of those many ill-defined and misunderstood nervous disorders, which, by their variety and complexity, present the greatest difficulty in medical practice.
The treatment I saw at once must be moral, not medical.
"I don't find much the matter with you," I said, cheerfully; "your disease is more fancy than reality—instead of lying here, you ought to be having a gallop across those moors yonder."
Lady Violet gazed at me with a look of surprise and even faint displeasure in her large brown eyes.
"I love riding," she said, in a gentle voice, "but it is long since I have had the pleasure of a canter over the moors or anywhere else."