If Aderhold still nursed a hope it was a faint and failing one. Before that day in Richmond the hope had been strong. This physician was a skilled man and knew skill when he saw it—the great Frenchman had written with a guarded enthusiasm, but yet with enthusiasm of what Gilbert Aderhold might do—the London physician had let drop a hint that he himself had thought at times of an assistant—if not that, he could certainly speak a word in season in another quarter. Aderhold had hoped—after Richmond he had hoped less strongly. Now he found that hope was failing. What had happened? What always happened? The physician continued standing. The room opened upon a garden, and outside the lattice window there showed a tender mist of budding tree and shrub. “You were so good,” said Aderhold, “as to bid me come to you upon your return.” “I wished,” said the physician, “to give all weight and recognition to the commendation of the Duke of —--.” A grey cat came and rubbed against his ankle. He stooped and lifting the creature to the table beside him stood stroking it. “The commendation of great noblemen is at times like their largesse. It often falls—through, of course, no fault of theirs—before the stranger and the unworthy.” “If I be unworthy,” said Aderhold, “yet I am not strange to that nobleman, nor, I think, unloved by him. He has been my good patron, almost, I might dare to say, my friend.” “Aye?” said the physician. “It has come to Court ears, with other French news, that the Duke is out of favour.... Moreover, a friend of my own has lately returned from Paris where he had long resided. He is a man of the world, with a great interest in life and a knowledge of what is talked about, small things as well as great. He told me”—the physician paused—“of _you_!” “Yes,” Aderhold said dully; “of me?” “He brought you in as a slight case, but typical, of what grows up in the narrow strip between religious wars and factions, between Leaguer and Huguenot—to wit, something that is neither Catholic nor Protestant, which the Leaguer would burn and the Huguenot would flay! He told me of your case and your trial and imprisonment, and how none would help you, neither Papist nor Reformed, but only this one nobleman whose child, it seems, you had healed, and even he could only help by helping you forth from France.” The physician continued to draw his hand over the grey fur. “I quarrel with that nobleman for considering that an atheist might prosper here in England, and for deceivingly writing to me only of his skill in all that pertained to his art! I might,” said the physician, “have become involved in what discovery and disfavour you may bring upon yourself in this realm!” “I am not,” said Aderhold, “an atheist. Sanction and authority and restraint are within.”