May Forestfield was brought back to her lodgings in
Podbury-street--how she never knew. The maid, whose devotion had
brought such obloquy upon her, half helped, half carried her mistress
down the avenue, and at the lodge they found the fly which had brought
them from Crawley. All the way to the station, and in the railway
carriage up to town, May lay in a half-comatose, half-hysterical
state; and when she had reached her lodging, and was once more
installed in her clean and pretty, if not luxurious, bedroom, it was
plain to the maid and to Mrs. Wilson that Lady Forestfield was 'in for
an illness' of some kind or other. Their predictions were speedily
verified. When the maid visited her mistress next morning, she found
her in a burning fever, so far advanced that her utterances were
already half delirious. The girl, who was tolerably bright, as well as
thoroughly devoted, remembered that in one or two cases of slight
illness, under which Lady Forestfield had suffered in Seamore-place, a
fashionable physician, Dr. Chenoweth, had been called in to attend
her. By the aid of the Blue-Book his address was obtained, and the
maid started off in a cab to beg an immediate visit from him.
Dr. Chenoweth was something more than a fashionable physician; he was,
like most of his brethren with whom the present writer is acquainted,
a gentleman, kind-hearted, self-sacrificing, and benevolent to a rare
degree. He knew all about the story of Lord and Lady Forestfield.
There were few scandals of any kind which did not come to his ears, to
be listened to generally with a smile and a shrug, to be repeated
sometimes--for there are certain patients to whom gossip is better
than medicine, and to whom the sound of the doctor's cheery voice is
of more service than his learned prescriptions--but never to be
allowed to militate in his mind against those who were the subjects of
them. Dr. Chenoweth thought it not at all improbable that in visiting
Lady Forestfield he might affront some of his most important patients;
for the affair had been much discussed, and it is needless to say that
few partisans ranged themselves on poor May's side. He knew nothing of
the pecuniary circumstances in which Lady Forestfield was then placed,
and would not have been surprised had they been such as possibly to
preclude the payment of his fees; he only recollected May Dunmow, the
pretty child whom he remembered riding with her father Lord Stortford
in the Row, and at whose wedding at St. Andrew's, Wells-street, he, an
old and intimate friend of the family, had been present. Dr. Chenoweth
accordingly bade his servant tell the messenger that his first visit
that day would be to Podbury-street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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