"I really ought to apologize for bringing you down," said Mr. Sheldon, as he led the doctor into the house. "I only consented to your being sent for in order to tranquillize this young fellow Hawkehurst, who is engaged to my daughter; a rising man, I believe, in his own particular line, but rather wild and impracticable. There is really no change for the worse, absolutely none; and as we have not been here more than three days, there has been positively no opportunity for testing the effect of change and sea air, and so on." This seemed rather like giving the learned physician his cue. And there were those among Dr. Doddleson's professional rivals who said that the worthy doctor was never slow to take a cue so given, not being prejudiced by any opinions of his own. Charlotte had by this time been established in her easy-chair by the open window of the sitting-room, and here Dr. Doddleson saw her, in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon; and here Dr. Doddleson went through the usual Abracadabra of his art, and assented to the opinions advanced, with all deference, by Mr. Sheldon. To Georgy this interview, in which Mr. Sheldon's opinions were pompously echoed by the West-end physician, proved even more comforting than the benignant career of the Dissenting minister, who was wont to allude to that solemn passing hence of which the ancients spoke in dim suggestive phrase, as "going upstairs." Diana and Valentine strolled in the garden while the physician saw his patient. Dr. Doddleson's ponderous polysyllables floated out upon the summer air like the droning of a humble-bee. It was a relief to Valentine to know that the doctor was with his patient: but he had no intention to let that gentleman depart unquestioned. "I will take no secondhand information," he thought; "I will hear this man's opinion from his own lips." He went round to the front of the house directly the droning had ceased, and was in the way when Dr. Doddleson and Mr. Sheldon came out of the rose-hung porch. "If you have no objection," he said to Mr. Sheldon, "I should like to ask Dr. Doddleson a few questions." "_I_ have no objection," replied the stockbroker; "but it is really altogether such an unusual thing, and I doubt if Dr. Doddleson will consent to--" And here he cast a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who should say, "Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand so entirely unwarranted by precedent?" Dowager Doddleson was eminently good-natured. "And this is our sweet young friend's _fiance_," he said; "dear me--dee-ar me!" And then he looked at Valentine with bland pale-blue eyes that twinkled behind his gold-framed spectacles; while Valentine was taking his measure, so far as the measure of any man's moral and intellectual force can be taken by the eyes of another man. "And this is the man who is chosen to snatch my darling from the jaws of death!" he said to himself, with burning rage in his heart, while the amiable physician repeated blandly: