The other had been an old friend of my husband's, and had always felt
a sincere interest in me for my husband's sake. After prescribing for
Rachel, he said he wished to speak to me privately in another room.
I expected, of course, to receive some special directions for the
management of my daughter's health. To my surprise, he took me gravely
by the hand, and said, 'I have been looking at you, Lady Verinder, with
a professional as well as a personal interest. You are, I am afraid, far
more urgently in need of medical advice than your daughter.' He put some
questions to me, which I was at first inclined to treat lightly enough,
until I observed that my answers distressed him. It ended in his making
an appointment to come and see me, accompanied by a medical friend, on
the next day, at an hour when Rachel would not be at home. The result
of that visit--most kindly and gently conveyed to me--satisfied both the
physicians that there had been precious time lost, which could never be
regained, and that my case had now passed beyond the reach of their art.
For more than two years I have been suffering under an insidious form of
heart disease, which, without any symptoms to alarm me, has, by little
and little, fatally broken me down.
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