"If you are wet the parlour fire will dry you. I beg you, sir, to follow me," said Jeremy. He led the way through the dark passage and, pausing with his hand on the door-knob, turned to the stranger and said with his grave courtesy:
"I think it right to warn you, sir, that I am afflicted with a certain personal disfigurement which not all persons can look upon with equanimity."
"Sir," replied the other, "my name is John Hattaway, surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, and I am used to regard with equanimity all forms of human affliction."
Mr. Hattaway was shown into the parlour and introduced in due form to Barbara. A chair was set for him near the fire. In the talk that followed he showed himself to be a man of parts and education. He was on his way, he said, to Oxford to perform an operation on the Warden of Merton College.
"What kind of operation?" asked Barbara.
His quick, keen eyes swept her like a searchlight.
"Madam," said he, not committing himself, "'tis but a slight one."
But when Barbara had left the room to mull some claret for her guest, Mr. Hattaway turned to Jeremy.
"'Tis a cataract," said he, "I am about to remove from the eye of the Warden of Merton by the new operation invented by my revered master, Mr. William Cheselden, my immediate predecessor at St. Thomas's. I did not tell your wife, for certain reasons; but I noticed that she is blinded by the same disease."
Jeremy rose from his chair.