Page:How I Met a Very Ignorant Practitioner.pdf/7

448 Confound him! What right had he to speak to me like that?

"It is very uncertain," I replied, by no means uncandidly. "Will you leave any message this time?"

"No; I have to be in London immediately." And with a curt "Good-day" he disappeared.

In the agreeable task of answering Inns, I quite forgot this unpleasant incident; indeed, it was only as an afterthought I made a casual reference to the man's visits, adding that Inns would no doubt be sorry to have missed his friend.

And now I began to torture myself with all my old doubts of again seeing Miss Innes (I learned the correct name later), and from that time, so fearful was I of being out of the way, that, except when on my few visits, I dared not stir a yard from the house. The next day passed, and the next, and the next after that, before my devotion was rewarded. Yes, she came, and how charming she looked! What I said, what I did, I cannot tell; all I know is that to her I spoke, at her I looked, and for a time I heard and saw no one else. I suppose I did not make a palpable fool of myself, for when I began to recover my balance Mrs. Innes was speaking.

"We can only think he must have altered in some way. Something must have happened; some terrible disease or disfigurement; he has been so much abroad. Tell me, Dr. Wilkinson, is it so? No? You have seen nothing of it?—Oh, what a relief! But why this refusal to meet us? We cannot help seeing that he avoids us. He who used to be so devoted to us both, while we remember him only as the gentlest, noblest, most chivalrous of men!"

"Good heavens!" I mentally exclaimed.

"And now," she continued, "I don't know what to think. There are only us three left, and he will not see us." She covered her face with her hands and sobbed. There was not a trace of her former stand-off manner now, and I felt genuinely sorry for her.

"Will you not help us, Dr. Wilkinson?"