One day, when the doctor sat alone in his surgery, she went to him and told him. "If you will only be kind enough to let me work," she said. "I shall always love this my home; but it seems to me that in body and mind I should be much better if I could work." "And work you shall," decided the doctor; "leave all to me." CHAPTER XXVI. Dr. Chalmers was getting on in the world. His practice had at first been confined exclusively to the locality in which he lived; but of late noble ladies had sent for him, and his name was mentioned with great honor in the medical journals. He had been consulted in some very difficult cases, and people said he saved Lady Poldean's life when all the physicians had pronounced her case hopeless. Honors were falling thick and fast upon him. Lady Dartelle, of Hulme Abbey, was one of those who placed implicit faith in him. Her ladyship was credited with passing through life with one eye firmly fixed on the "main chance." She never neglected an opportunity of saving a guinea; and she was wont to observe that she had much better advice from Dr. Chalmers for five guineas than she could procure from a fashionable physician for twenty. Her youngest daughter, Clara, had been ailing for some time, and Lady Dartelle decided on leaving Hulme Abbey and coming up to town for the benefit of the doctor's advice. Lady Dartelle was a widow--"left," as she was accustomed to observe, emphatically, "with four dear children." The eldest, the son and heir, Sir Aubrey, was travelling on the Continent; her two daughters, Veronica and Mildred, were accomplished young ladies who had taken every worldly maxim to heart, and never bestowed a thought upon anything save of the most frivolous nature. They had made their _début_ some years before, but it had not been a very successful one. The young ladies were only moderately good looking, and they had not the most amiable of tempers. Perhaps this latter fact might account in some degree for several matrimonial failures. The young ladies had not accompanied Lady Dartelle to town--they objected to be seen there out of season--so that her ladyship had the whole of the mansion to herself. Dr. Chalmers had one day been sitting for some time by the child, examining her, talking to her and asking her innumerable questions. She was a fair, fragile, pretty child, with great earnest eyes and sensitive lips. The doctor's heart warmed to her; and when Lady Dartelle sent to request his presence in her room, he looked very anxious. "I want you to tell me the truth, doctor," she said. "The child has never been very well nor very ill. I want to know if you think she is in any danger." "I cannot tell," he replied. "It seems to me that the child's chances are equal for life or death." "I may not send her to school, then?" she said; and a shade of annoyance passed over the lady's face.