Dr Thorne

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE DOC­TOR HEARS SOME­THING TO HIS AD­VAN­TAGE

Sir Louis Scatcherd had told his moth­er that he was rather out of sorts, and when he reached Box­all Hill it cer­tain­ly did not ap­pear that he had giv­en any ex­ag­ger­at­ed state­ment of his own mal­adies. He cer­tain­ly was a good deal out of sorts. He had had more than one at­tack of delir­ium tremens af­ter his fa­ther’s death, and had al­most been at death’s door.

Noth­ing had been said about this by Dr Thorne at Box­all Hill; but he was by no means ig­no­rant of his ward’s state. Twice he had gone up to Lon­don to vis­it him; twice he had begged him to go down in­to the coun­try and place him­self un­der his moth­er’s care. On the last oc­ca­sion, the doc­tor had threat­ened him with all man­ner of pains and penal­ties: with pains, as to his speedy de­par­ture from this world and all its joys; and with penal­ties, in the shape of pover­ty if that de­par­ture should by any chance be re­tard­ed. But these threats had at the mo­ment been in vain, and the doc­tor had com­pro­mised mat­ters by in­duc­ing Sir Louis to promise that he would go to Brighton. The baronet, how­ev­er, who was at length fright­ened by some re­newed at­tack, gave up his Brighton scheme, and, with­out no­tice to the doc­tor, hur­ried down to Box­all Hill.

Mary did not see him on the first day of his com­ing, but the doc­tor did. He re­ceived such in­ti­ma­tion of the vis­it as en­abled him to be at the house soon af­ter the young man’s ar­rival; and, know­ing that his as­sis­tance might be nec­es­sary, he rode over to Box­all Hill. It was a dread­ful task to him, this of mak­ing the same fruit­less en­deav­our for the son that he had made for the fa­ther, and in the same house. But he was bound by ev­ery con­sid­er­ation to per­form the task. He had promised the fa­ther that he would do for the son all that was in his pow­er; and he had, more­over, the con­scious­ness, that should Sir Louis suc­ceed in de­stroy­ing him­self, the next heir to all the prop­er­ty was his own niece, Mary Thorne.

He found Sir Louis in a low, wretched, mis­er­able state. Though he was a drunk­ard as his fa­ther was, he was not at all such a drunk­ard as his fa­ther. The phys­ical ca­pac­ities of the men were very dif­fer­ent. The dai­ly amount of al­co­hol which the fa­ther had con­sumed would have burnt up the son in a week; where­as, though the son was con­tin­ual­ly tip­sy, what he swal­lowed would hard­ly have had an in­ju­ri­ous ef­fect up­on the fa­ther.

‘You are all wrong, quite wrong,’ said Sir Louis petu­lant­ly; ‘it isn’t that at all. I have tak­en noth­ing this week past–lit­er­al­ly noth­ing. I think it’s the liv­er.’

Dr Thorne want­ed no one to tell him what was the mat­ter with his ward. It was his liv­er; his liv­er, and his head, and his stom­ach, and his heart. Ev­ery or­gan in his body had been de­stroyed, or was in the course of de­struc­tion. His fa­ther had killed him­self with brandy; the son more el­evat­ed in his tastes, was do­ing the same thing with cu­ra­coa, maraschi­no, and cher­ry-​bounce.

‘Sir Louis,’ said the doc­tor–he was obliged to be much more punc­til­ious with him than he had been with the con­trac­tor–’the mat­ter is in your hands en­tire­ly: if you can­not keep your lips from that ac­cursed poi­son, you have noth­ing in this world to look for­ward to; noth­ing, noth­ing!’

Mary pro­posed to re­turn with her un­cle to Gre­shams­bury, and he was at first in­clined that she should do so. But this idea was over­ruled, part­ly in com­pli­ance with La­dy Scatcherd’s en­treaties, and part­ly be­cause it would have seemed as though they had both thought the pres­ence of the own­er had made the house an un­fit habi­ta­tion for de­cent peo­ple. The doc­tor, there­fore, re­turned, leav­ing Mary there; and La­dy Scatcherd bus­ied her­self be­tween her two guests.

On the next day Sir Louis was able to come down to a late din­ner, and Mary was in­tro­duced to him. He had dressed him­self in his best ar­ray; and as he had–at any rate for the present mo­ment–been fright­ened out of his li­ba­tions, he was pre­pared to make him­self as agree­able as pos­si­ble. His moth­er wait­ed on him al­most as a slave might have done; but she seemed to do so with the fear of a slave rather than the love of a moth­er. She was fid­gety in her at­ten­tions, and wor­ried him by en­deav­our­ing to make her evening sit­ting-​room agree­able.

But Sir Louis, though he was not very sweet­ly be­haved un­der these ma­nip­ula­tions from his moth­er’s hands, was quite com­plaisant to Miss Thorne; nay, af­ter the ex­pi­ra­tion of a week he was al­most more than com­plaisant. He piqued him­self on his gal­lantry, and now found that, in the oth­er­wise dull seclu­sion of Box­all Hill, he had a good op­por­tu­ni­ty of ex­er­cis­ing it. To do him jus­tice it must be ad­mit­ted that he would not have been in­ca­pable of a de­cent ca­reer had he stum­bled on some girl who could have loved him be­fore he stum­bled up­on his maraschi­no bot­tle. Such might have been the case with many a lost rake. The things that are bad are ac­cept­ed be­cause the things that are good do not come eas­ily in his way. How many a mis­er­able fa­ther re­viles with bit­ter­ness of spir­it the low tastes of his son, who has done noth­ing to pro­vide his child with high­er plea­sures!

Sir Louis–part­ly in the hopes of Mary’s smiles, and part­ly fright­ened by the doc­tor’s threats–did, for a while, keep him­self with­in de­cent bounds. He did not usu­al­ly ap­pear be­fore Mary’s eyes till three or four in the af­ter­noon; but when he did come forth, he came forth sober and res­olute to please. His moth­er was de­light­ed, and was not slow to sing his prais­es; and even the doc­tor, who now vis­it­ed Box­all Hill more fre­quent­ly than ev­er, be­gan to have some hopes.

One con­stant sub­ject, I must not say of con­ver­sa­tion, on the part of La­dy Scatcherd, but rather of decla­ma­tion, had hith­er­to been the beau­ty and man­ly at­tributes of Frank Gre­sham. She had hard­ly ceased to talk to Mary of the in­fi­nite good qual­ities of the young squire, and es­pe­cial­ly of his prowess in the mat­ter of Mr Mof­fat. Mary had lis­tened to all this elo­quence, not per­haps with inat­ten­tion, but with­out much re­ply. She had not been ex­act­ly sor­ry to hear Frank talked about; in­deed, had she been so mind­ed, she could her­self have said some­thing on the same sub­ject; but she did not wish to take La­dy Scatcherd al­to­geth­er in­to her con­fi­dence, and she had been un­able to say much about Frank Gre­sham with­out do­ing so. La­dy Scatcherd had, there­fore, grad­ual­ly con­ceived that her dar­ling was not a favourite with her guest.

Now, there­fore, she changed the sub­ject; and, as her own son was be­hav­ing with such un­ex­am­pled pro­pri­ety, she dropped Frank and con­fined her eu­lo­gies to Louis. He had been a lit­tle wild, she ad­mit­ted; young men so of­ten were so; but she hoped that it was now over.

‘He does still take a lit­tle drop of those French drinks in the morn­ing,’ said La­dy Scatcherd, in her con­fi­dence; for she was too hon­est to be false, even in her own cause. ‘He does that, I know: but that’s noth­ing, my dear, to swill­ing all day; and ev­ery­thing can’t be done at once, can it, Miss Thorne?’

On this sub­ject Mary found her tongue loos­ened. She could not talk about Frank Gre­sham, but she could speak with hope to the moth­er of her on­ly son. She could say that Sir Louis was still very young; that there was rea­son to trust that he might now re­form; that his present con­duct was ap­par­ent­ly good; and that he ap­peared ca­pa­ble of bet­ter things. So much she did say; and the moth­er took her sym­pa­thy for more than it was worth.

On this mat­ter, and on this mat­ter per­haps alone, Sir Louis and La­dy Scatcherd were in ac­cord. There was much to rec­om­mend Mary to the baronet; not on­ly did he see her to be beau­ti­ful, and per­ceive her to be at­trac­tive and la­dy­like; but she was al­so the niece of the man who, for the present, held the purse-​strings of his wealth. Mary, it is true, had no for­tune. But Sir Louis knew that she was ac­knowl­edged to be a la­dy; and he was am­bi­tious that his ‘la­dy’ should be a la­dy. There was al­so much to rec­om­mend Mary to the moth­er, to any moth­er; and thus it came to pass, that Miss Thorne had no ob­sta­cle be­tween her and the dig­ni­ty of be­ing La­dy Scatcherd the sec­ond;–no ob­sta­cle what­ev­er, if on­ly she could bring her­self to wish it.

It was some time–two or three weeks, per­haps–be­fore Mary’s mind was first opened to this new bril­lian­cy in her prospects. Sir Louis at first was rather afraid of her, and did not de­clare his ad­mi­ra­tion in any very de­ter­mined terms. He cer­tain­ly paid her many com­pli­ments which, from any one else she would have re­gard­ed as abom­inable. But she did not ex­pect great things from the baronet’s taste: she con­clud­ed that he was on­ly do­ing what he thought a gen­tle­man should do; and she was will­ing to for­give much for La­dy Scatcherd’s sake.

His first at­tempts were, per­haps, more lu­di­crous than pas­sion­ate. He was still too much an in­valid to take walks, and Mary was there­fore saved from his com­pa­ny in her ram­bles; but he had a horse of his own at Box­all Hill, and had been ad­vised to ride by the doc­tor. Mary al­so rode–on a don­key on­ly, it is true–but Sir Louis found him­self bound in gal­lantry to ac­com­pa­ny her. Mary’s steed had an­swered ev­ery ex­pec­ta­tions, and proved him­self very qui­et; so qui­et, that with­out the ad­mo­ni­tion of a cud­gel be­hind him, he could hard­ly be per­suad­ed in­to the de­murest trot. Now, as Sir Louis’s horse was of a very dif­fer­ent met­tle, he found it rather dif­fi­cult not to step faster than his in­amora­ta; and, let it him strug­gle as he would, was gen­er­al­ly so far ahead as to be de­barred the de­lights of con­ver­sa­tion.

When the sec­ond time he pro­posed to ac­com­pa­ny her, Mary did what she could to hin­der it. She saw that he had been rather ashamed of the man­ner in which his com­pan­ion was mount­ed, and she her­self would have en­joyed the ride much more with­out him. He was an in­valid, how­ev­er; it was nec­es­sary to make much of him, and Mary did not ab­so­lute­ly refuse the of­fer.

‘La­dy Scatcherd,’ said he, as they were stand­ing at the door pre­vi­ous to mount­ing–he al­ways called his moth­er La­dy Scatcherd–’why don’t you take a horse for Miss Thorne? This don­key is–is–re­al­ly is, so very–very–can’t go at all, you know?’

La­dy Scatcherd be­gan to de­clare that she would will­ing have got a pony if Mary would have let her do it.

‘Oh, no, La­dy Scatcherd; not on any ac­count. I do like the don­key so much–I do in­deed.’

‘But he won’t go,’ said Sir Louis. ‘And for a per­son who rides like you, Miss Thorne–such a horse­wom­an you know–why, you know, La­dy Scatcherd, it’s pos­itive­ly ridicu­lous; d—- ab­surd, you know.’

And then, with an an­gry look at his moth­er, he mount­ed his horse, and was soon lead­ing the way down the av­enue.

‘Miss Thorne,’ said he, pulling him­self up at the gate, ‘if I had known that I was to be so ex­treme­ly hap­py as to have found you here, I would have brought you down the most beau­ti­ful crea­ture, an Arab. She be­longs to my friend Jenk­ins; but I wouldn’t have stood at any price in get­ting her for you. By Jove! if you were on that mare, I’d back you, for style and ap­pear­ance, against any­thing in Hyde Park.’

The of­fer of this sport­ing wa­ger, which nat­ural­ly would have been very grat­ify­ing to Mary, was lost up­on her, for Sir Louis had again un­wit­ting­ly got on in ad­vance, but he stopped him­self in time to hear Mary again de­clare her pas­sion was a don­key.

‘If you could on­ly see Jenk­ins’s lit­tle mare, Miss Thorne! On­ly say one word, and she shall be down here be­fore the week’s end. Price shall be no ob­sta­cle–none what­ev­er. By Jove, what a pair you would be!’

This gen­er­ous of­fer was re­peat­ed four or five times; but on each oc­ca­sion Mary on­ly half heard what was said, and on each oc­ca­sion the baronet was far too much in ad­vance to hear Mary’s re­ply. At last he rec­ol­lect­ed that he want­ed to call on one of his ten­ants, and begged his com­pan­ion to al­low him to ride on.

‘If you at all dis­like be­ing alone, you know–’

‘Oh dear no, not at all, Sir Louis. I am quite used to it.’

‘Be­cause I don’t care about it, you know; on­ly I can’t make this horse walk the same pace as that brute.’

‘You mustn’t abuse my pet, Sir Louis.’

‘It’s a d— shame on my moth­er’s part;’ said Sir Louis, who, even when in his best be­haviour, could not quite give up his or­di­nary mode of con­ver­sa­tion. ‘When she was for­tu­nate enough to get such a girl as you to come and stay with her, she ought to have had some­thing prop­er for her to ride up­on; but I’ll look to it as soon as I am a lit­tle stronger, you see if I don’t;’ and, so say­ing, Sir Louis trot­ted off, leav­ing Mary in peace with her don­key.

Sir Louis had now been liv­ing clean­ly and for­swear­ing sack for what was to him a very long pe­ri­od, and his health felt the good ef­fects of it. No one re­joiced at this more cor­dial­ly than did the doc­tor. To re­joice at it was with him a point of con­science. He could not help telling him­self now and again that, cir­cum­stanced as he was, he was most spe­cial­ly bound to take joy in any sign of ref­or­ma­tion that the baronet might show. Not to do so would be al­most tan­ta­mount to wish­ing that he might die in or­der that Mary might in­her­it his wealth; and, there­fore, the doc­tor did with all his en­er­gy de­vote him­self to the dif­fi­cult task of hop­ing and striv­ing that Sir Louis might yet live to en­joy what was his own. But the task was al­to­geth­er a dif­fi­cult one, for as Sir Louis be­came stronger in health, so al­so did he be­come more ex­or­bi­tant in his de­mands on the doc­tor’s pa­tience, and more re­pug­nant to the doc­tor’s tastes.

In his worst fits of dis­rep­utable liv­ing he was ashamed to ap­ply to his guardian for mon­ey; and in his worst fits of ill­ness he was through fear, some­what pa­tient un­der his doc­tor’s hands; but just at present he had noth­ing of which to be ashamed, and was not at all pa­tient.

‘Doc­tor,’–said he, one day, at Box­all Hill–’how about those Gre­shams­bury ti­tle-​deeds?’

‘Oh, that will all be prop­er­ly set­tled be­tween my lawyer and your own.’

‘Oh–ah–yes; no doubt the lawyers will set­tle it; set­tle it with a fine bill of costs. But, as Finnie says,’–Finnie was Sir Louis’s le­gal ad­vis­er–’I have got a tremen­dous­ly large in­ter­est at stake in this mat­ter; eighty thou­sand pounds is no joke. It ain’t ev­ery­body that can shell out eighty thou­sand pounds when they’re want­ed; and I should like to know how the thing’s go­ing on. I’ve a right to ask, you know; eh, doc­tor?’

‘The ti­tle-​deeds of a large por­tion of Gre­shams­bury es­tate will be placed with the mort­gage-​deeds be­fore the end of next month.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. I choose to know about these things; for though my fa­ther did make such a con-​foun-​ded will, that’s no rea­son I shouldn’t know how things are go­ing.’

‘You shall know ev­ery­thing that I know, Sir Louis.’

‘And now, doc­tor, what are we to do about mon­ey?’

‘About mon­ey?’

‘Yes; mon­ey, rhi­no, ready! “put mon­ey in your purse and cut a dash”; eh, doc­tor? Not that I want to cut a dash. No, I’m go­ing on the qui­et line al­to­geth­er now: I’ve done with that sort of thing.’

‘I’m hearti­ly glad of it; hearti­ly,’ said the doc­tor.

‘Yes, I’m not go­ing to make way for my far-​away cousin yet; not if I know it, at least. I shall soon be all right now, doc­tor; shan’t I?’

‘”All right” is a long word, Sir Louis. But I do hope you will be all right in time, if you will live with de­cent pru­dence. You shouldn’t take that filth in the morn­ing though.’

‘Filth in the morn­ing! That’s my moth­er, I sup­pose! That’s her la­dy­ship! She’s been talk­ing, has she? Don’t you be­lieve her, doc­tor. There’s not a young man in Barset­shire is go­ing more reg­ular, all right with­in the posts, than I am.’

The doc­tor was obliged to ac­knowl­edge that there did seem to be some im­prove­ment.

‘And now, doc­tor, how about mon­ey, eh?’

Doc­tor Thorne, like oth­er guardians sim­ilar­ly cir­cum­stanced, be­gan to ex­plain that Sir Louis had al­ready had a good deal of mon­ey, and had be­gun al­so to promise that more should be forth­com­ing in the event of good be­haviour, when he was some­what sud­den­ly in­ter­rupt­ed by Sir Louis.

‘Well, now; I’ll tell you what, doc­tor; I’ve got a bit of news for you; some­thing that I think will as­ton­ish you.’

The doc­tor opened his eyes, and tried to look as though ready to be sur­prised.

‘Some­thing that will re­al­ly make you look about; and some­thing, too, that will be very much to the hear­er’s ad­van­tage,–as the news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments say.’

‘Some­thing to my ad­van­tage?’ said the doc­tor.

‘Well, I hope you’ll think so. Doc­tor, what would you think now of my get­ting mar­ried?’

‘I should be de­light­ed to hear of it–more de­light­ed than I can ex­press; that is, of course, if you were to mar­ry well. It was your fa­ther’s most ea­ger wish that you should mar­ry ear­ly.’

‘That’s part­ly my rea­son,’ said the young hyp­ocrite. ‘But then if I mar­ry I must have an in­come fit to live on; eh, doc­tor?’

The doc­tor had some fear that his in­ter­est­ing pro­tege was de­sirous of a wife for the sake of the in­come, in­stead of de­sir­ing the in­come for the sake of the wife. But let the cause be what it would, mar­riage would prob­ably be good for him; and he had no hes­ita­tion, there­fore, in telling him, that if he mar­ried well, he should be put in pos­ses­sion of suf­fi­cient in­come to main­tain the new La­dy Scatcherd in a man­ner be­com­ing her dig­ni­ty.

‘As to mar­ry­ing well,’ said Sir Louis, ‘you, I take it, will the be the last man, doc­tor, to quar­rel with my choice.’

‘Will I?’ said the doc­tor, smil­ing.

‘Well, you won’t dis­ap­prove, I guess, as the Yan­kee says. What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?’

It must be said in Sir Louis’s favour that he had prob­ably no idea what­ev­er of the es­ti­ma­tion in which such young ladies as Mary Thorne are held by those who are near­est and dear­est to them. He had no sort of con­cep­tion that she was re­gard­ed by her un­cle and in­es­timable trea­sure, al­most too pre­cious to be ren­dered up to the arms of any man; and in­finite­ly be­yond any price in sil­ver and gold, baronet’s in­comes of eight or ten thou­sand a year, and such coins usu­al­ly cur­rent in the world’s mar­kets. He was a rich man and a baronet, and Mary was an un­mar­ried girl with­out a por­tion. In Louis’s es­ti­ma­tion he was of­fer­ing ev­ery­thing, and ask­ing for noth­ing. He cer­tain­ly had some idea that girls were apt to be coy, and re­quired a lit­tle woo­ing in the shape of presents, civ­il speech­es–per­haps kiss­es al­so. The civ­il speech­es he had, he thought, done, and imag­ined that they had been well re­ceived. The oth­er things were to fol­low; an Arab pony, for in­stance–and the kiss­es prob­ably with it; and then all these dif­fi­cul­ties would be smoothed.

But he did not for a mo­ment con­ceive that there would be any dif­fi­cul­ty with the un­cle. How should there be? Was he not a baronet with ten thou­sand a year com­ing to him? Had he not ev­ery­thing which fa­thers want for por­tion­less daugh­ters, and un­cles for de­pen­dant nieces? Might he not well in­form the doc­tor that he had some­thing to tell him for his ad­van­tage?

And yet, to tell the truth, the doc­tor did not seem to be over­joyed when the an­nounce­ment was first made to him. He was by no means over­joyed. On the con­trary, even Sir Louis could per­ceive his guardian’s sur­prise was al­to­geth­er un­mixed with de­light.

What a ques­tion was this that was asked him! What would he think of a mar­riage be­tween Mary Thorne–his Mary and Sir Louis Scatcherd? Be­tween the al­pha of the whole al­pha­bet, and him whom he could not but re­gard as the omega! Think of it! Why he would think of it as though a lamb and a wolf were to stand at the al­tar to­geth­er. Had Sir Louis been a Hot­ten­tot, or an Es­quimaux, the pro­pos­al could not have as­ton­ished him more. The two per­sons were so to­tal­ly of a dif­fer­ent class, that the idea of the one falling in love with the oth­er had nev­er oc­curred to him. ‘What would you think of Miss Mary Thorne?’ Sir Louis had asked; and the doc­tor, in­stead of an­swer­ing him with ready and pleas­ant alacrity, stood silent, thun­der­struck with amaze­ment.

‘Well, wouldn’t she be a good wife?’ said Sir Louis, rather in a tone of dis­gust at the ev­ident dis­ap­proval shown in his choice. ‘I thought you would have been so de­light­ed.’

‘Mary Thorne!’ ejac­ulat­ed the doc­tor at last. ‘Have you spo­ken to my niece about this, Sir Louis?’

‘Well, I have and yet I haven’t; I haven’t, and yet in a man­ner I have.’

‘I don’t un­der­stand you,’ said the doc­tor.

‘Why, you see, I haven’t ex­act­ly popped to her yet; but I have been do­ing the civ­il; and if she’s up to snuff, as I take her to be, she knows very well what I’m af­ter by this time.’

Up to snuff! Mary Thorne, his Mary Thorne, up to snuff! To snuff too of such a very dis­agree­able de­scrip­tion!

‘I think, Sir Louis, that you are in mis­take about this. I think you will find that Mary will not be dis­posed to avail her­self of the great ad­van­tages–for great they un­doubt­ed­ly are–which you are able to of­fer to your in­tend­ed wife. If you will take my ad­vice, you will give up think­ing of Mary. She would not suit you.’

‘Not suit me! Oh, but I think she just would. She’s got no mon­ey, you mean?’

‘No, I did not mean that. It will not sig­ni­fy to you whether your wife has mon­ey or not. You need not look for mon­ey. But you should think of some one more near­ly of your tem­per­ament. I am quite sure that my niece would refuse you.’

These last words the doc­tor ut­tered with much em­pha­sis. His in­ten­tion was to make the baronet un­der­stand that the mat­ter was quite hope­less, and to in­duce him if pos­si­ble to drop it on the spot. But he did not know Sir Louis; he ranked him too low in the scale of hu­man be­ings, and gave him no cred­it for any strength of char­ac­ter. Sir Louis in his way did love Mary Thorne. And could not bring him­self to be­lieve that Mary did not, or at any rate, would not soon re­turn his pas­sion. He was, more­over, suf­fi­cient­ly ob­sti­nate, firm we ought per­haps to say–for his pur­suit in this case was cer­tain­ly not an evil one,–and he at once made up his mind to suc­ceed in spite of the un­cle.

‘If she con­sents, how­ev­er, you will do so too?’ asked he.

‘It is im­pos­si­ble that she should con­sent,’ said the doc­tor.

‘Im­pos­si­ble! I don’t see any­thing at all im­pos­si­ble. But if she does?’

‘But she won’t.’

‘Very well,–that’s to be seen. But just tell me this, if she does, will you con­sent?’

‘The stars would fall first. It’s all non­sense. Give it up, my dear friend; be­lieve me you are on­ly prepar­ing un­hap­pi­ness for your­self;’ and the doc­tor put his hand kind­ly on the young man’s arm. ‘She will not, can­not, ac­cept such an of­fer.’

‘Will not! can­not!’ said the baronet, think­ing over all the rea­sons which in his es­ti­ma­tion could pos­si­bly be in­duc­ing the doc­tor to be so hos­tile to his views, and shak­ing the hand of his arm. ‘Will not! can­not! But come, doc­tor, an­swer my ques­tion fair­ly. If she’ll have me for bet­ter or worse, you won’t say aught against it; will you?’

‘But she won’t have you; why should you give her and your­self the pain of a re­fusal?’

‘Oh, as for that, I must stand my chance like an­oth­er. And as for her, why d—, doc­tor, you wouldn’t have me be­lieve that any young la­dy thinks it so very dread­ful to have a baronet with ten thou­sand pounds a year at her feet, spe­cial­ly when that same baronet ain’t very old, nor yet par­tic­ular­ly ug­ly. I ain’t so green as that, doc­tor.’

‘I sup­pose she must go through with it, then,’ said the doc­tor, mus­ing.

‘But, Dr Thorne, I did look for a kinder an­swer from you, con­sid­er­ing all that you so of­ten say about your great friend­ship with my fa­ther. I did think you’d at any rate an­swer me when I asked you a ques­tion.’

But the doc­tor did not want to an­swer that spe­cial ques­tion. Could it be pos­si­ble that Mary should wish to mar­ry this odi­ous man, could such a state of things be imag­ined to be the case, he would not refuse his con­sent, in­finite­ly as he would be dis­gust­ed by her choice. But he would not give Sir Louis any ex­cuse of telling Mary that her un­cle ap­proved of so odi­ous a match.

‘I can­not say that in case I would ap­prove of such a mar­riage, Sir Louis. I can­not bring my­self to say so; for I know it would make you both mis­er­able. But on that mat­ter my niece will choose whol­ly for her­self.’

‘And about mon­ey, doc­tor?’

‘If you mar­ry a de­cent wom­an you shall not want the means of sup­port­ing her de­cent­ly,’ and so say­ing the doc­tor walked away, leav­ing Sir Louis to his med­ita­tions.