“I think it was trinitrin,” Miss Russell replied, with an appearance of doubtfulness. “Perhaps you will write the prescription and I will despatch a messenger at once. I should be obliged, doctor, if you would remain with us until--if you would remain with us.” “Decidedly!” I said. “I will remain with pleasure. But do accept my assurance,” I added, gazing at her face, so anxious and apprehensive, “that there is no cause for alarm.” She smiled and concurred. But I could see that I had not convinced her. And I began to suspect that she was not after all so intelligent as I had imagined. My patient, who was not now in any pain, lay calmly, with closed eyes. III. Do not forget the old bald-headed lawyer in the drawing-room. “I suppose you are often summoned to the Grand Babylon, sir, living, as you do, just round the corner,” he remarked to me somewhat pompously. He had a big nose and a habit of staring at you over his eye-glasses with his mouth wide-open, after having spoken. We were alone together in the drawing-room. I was waiting for the arrival of the medicine, and he was waiting for--I didn’t know what he was waiting for. “Occasionally. Not often,” I responded. “I am called more frequently to the Majestic, over the way.” “Ah, just so, just so,” he murmured. I could see that he meant to be polite in his high and dry antique legal style; and I could see also that he was very bored in that hotel drawing-room. So I proceeded to explain the case to him, and to question him discreetly about my patient and Miss Russell. “You are, of course, aware, sir, that the young lady is Miss Spanton, Miss Adelaide Spanton?” he said. “What? Not ‘the’ Spanton?” “Precisely, sir. The daughter of Edgar Spanton, my late client, the great newspaper proprietor.” “And this Miss Russell?” “Miss Russell was formerly Miss Adelaide’s governess. She is now her friend, and profoundly attached to the young lady; a disinterested attachment, so far as I can judge, though naturally many people will think otherwise. Miss Adelaide is of a very shy and retiring disposition; she has no other friends, and she has no near relatives. Save for Miss Russell she is, sir, if I may so phrase it, alone in the world.” “But Miss Spanton is surely very wealthy?” “You come to the point, sir. If my young client reaches her twenty-first birthday she will be the absolute mistress of the whole of her father’s fortune. You may have noticed in the public press that I swore his estate at more than three millions.” “And how far is Miss Spanton from her twenty-first birthday?” I demanded. The old lawyer glanced at his watch. “Something less than three hours. At midnight she will have legally entered on her 22nd year.”