Gilbert promised to effect this arrangement, as soon as the patient was well enough to be moved.  He would run down to Hampton or Kingston, he told Mr. Mew, in a day or two, and look for suitable lodgings.

“Hampton or Kingston by all means,” replied the surgeon cheerily.  “Both very pleasant places in their way, and as mild as any neighbourhood within easy reach of town.  Don’t go too near the water, and be sure your rooms are dry and airy—­that’s the main point.  We might move him early next week, I fancy; if we get him up for an hour or two every day in the interval.”

Gilbert had kept Mrs. Branston very well informed as to John Saltram’s progress, and that impetuous little woman had sent a ponderous retainer of the footman species to the Temple daily, laden now with hothouse grapes, and anon with dainty jellies, clear turtle-soups, or delicate preparations of chicken, blancmanges and iced drinks; the conveyance whereof was a sore grievance to the ponderous domestic, in spite of all the aid to be derived from a liberal employment of cabs.  Adela Branston had sent these things in defiance of her outraged kinswoman, Mrs. Pallinson, who was not slow to descant upon the impropriety of such a proceeding.

“I wonder you can talk in such a way, when you know how friendless this poor Mr. Saltram is, and how little trouble it costs me to do as much as this for him.  But I daresay the good Samaritan had some one at home who objected to the waste of that twopence he paid for the poor traveller.”

Mrs. Pallinson gave a little shriek of horror on hearing this allusion, and protested against so profane a use of the gospel.

“But the gospel was meant to be our guide in common things, wasn’t it, Mrs. Pallinson?  However, there’s not the least use in your being angry; for I mean to do what I can for Mr. Saltram, and there’s no one in the world could turn me from my intention.”

“Indeed!” cried the elder lady, indignantly; “and when he recovers you mean to marry him, I daresay.  You will be weak enough to throw away your fortune upon a profligate and a spendthrift, a man who is certain to make any woman miserable.”

And hereupon there arose what Sheridan calls “a very pretty quarrel” between the two ladies, which went very near to end in Mrs. Pallinson’s total withdrawal from Cavendish-square.  Very nearly, but not quite, to that agreeable consummation did matters proceed; for, on the very verge of the final words which could have spoken the sentence of separation, Mrs. Pallinson was suddenly melted, and declared that nothing, no outrage of her feelings—­“and heaven knows how they have been trodden on this day,” the injured matron added in parenthesis—­should induce her to desert her dearest Adela.  And so there was a hollow peace patched up, and Mrs. Branston felt that the blessings of freedom, the delightful relief of an escape from Pallinsonian influences, were not yet to be hers.  Directly she heard from Gilbert that change of air had been ordered for the patient, she was eager to offer her villa near Maidenhead for his accommodation.  “The house is always kept in apple-pie order,” she wrote to Gilbert; “and I can send down more servants to make everything comfortable for the invalid.”