"Oh, I'm not ill," he said hastily; and his forehead grew damp as he floundered about, looking fishy now about the eyes and mouth, which opened and shut at intervals, as if to give passage to words which never came. "Felt I was--er--little out of sorts, you know, and thought I'd see the doctor. Let's see, I said so before, didn't I?" "Yes, I think you did, Mr Poynter. Here is my father." There was a slight cough just then, the door opened, and the doctor entered, his bland, aristocratic presence contrasting broadly with that of his patient. "Ah, Poynter," he said, "good-morning. Don't go, my dear; Mr Poynter will come into my consulting-room, I daresay." "Yes, of course," cried the patient, shaking hands, and forgetting to leave off. "I shall--shall you?--good-morning, Miss Chartley." He released the doctor's hand, to turn and shake Richmond's which he pressed desperately, and then followed the bland, calm, stately doctor out of the room, when he caught up his hat savagely and ground his teeth in the dark passage. "I feel just like a fool when I'm with her!" he said to himself. "I never feel so anywhere else. And I ain't a fool. I should just like to see the man who would say I was." The doctor led the way through the glazed door into the dim surgery, with its rows of bottles, and stoppered glass jars containing unpleasant looking specimens preserved in spirits, all carefully labelled and inscribed in the doctor's own neat hand, but grown yellow with time; and as he closed the door after his patient, the latter's nostrils distended slightly, and an air of disgust chased the inane look as he breathed the unpleasant medicinal druggy air. "I was just busy over my discovery," continued the doctor blandly, "and I thought as a friend you would not mind coming here--it is the consulting-room, my dear Poynter; and I could go on, and we could chat over your ailment the while." "Oh, it's all the same to me," said Poynter; and, once out of Richmond's presence, he seemed another being. Instead of carrying his glossy hat in his hand, he had resumed it, and wore it with a vulgar cock; he walked with the swagger of the low-class City man; and his face shone as he whisked out a second crimson silk handkerchief redolent of perfume, and blew his nose with a loud blast, which sounded defiant. "Here we are," said the doctor, smiling at his patient, as if after a long search he had found the ill which troubled him, and pulled it up by the roots. "Take that chair, my dear Poynter," he continued, pointing to one by the fire, where a bright copper kettle was on the hob, and closing the door, while his patient took off his hat, glanced round the room, and blew the dust off the top of a side table before depositing thereon his new head-covering. There was a litter on the table, a chemist's set of weights and scales, divers papers, a spatula, pestle and mortar of glass, toy-like in size, and a book with memoranda, and pen and ink.