After what Betteredge had told me, I naturally anticipated finding traces in the doctor’s face of the severe illness from which he had suffered.  But I was utterly unprepared for such a change as I saw in him when he entered the room and shook hands with me.  His eyes were dim; his hair had turned completely grey; his face was wizen; his figure had shrunk.  I looked at the once lively, rattlepated, humorous little doctor—­associated in my remembrance with the perpetration of incorrigible social indiscretions and innumerable boyish jokes—­and I saw nothing left of his former self, but the old tendency to vulgar smartness in his dress.  The man was a wreck; but his clothes and his jewellery—­in cruel mockery of the change in him—­were as gay and as gaudy as ever.

“I have often thought of you, Mr. Blake,” he said; “and I am heartily glad to see you again at last.  If there is anything I can do for you, pray command my services, sir—­pray command my services!”

He said those few commonplace words with needless hurry and eagerness, and with a curiosity to know what had brought me to Yorkshire, which he was perfectly—­I might say childishly—­incapable of concealing from notice.

With the object that I had in view, I had of course foreseen the necessity of entering into some sort of personal explanation, before I could hope to interest people, mostly strangers to me, in doing their best to assist my inquiry.  On the journey to Frizinghall I had arranged what my explanation was to be—­and I seized the opportunity now offered to me of trying the effect of it on Mr. Candy.

“I was in Yorkshire, the other day, and I am in Yorkshire again now, on rather a romantic errand,” I said.  “It is a matter, Mr. Candy, in which the late Lady Verinder’s friends all took some interest.  You remember the mysterious loss of the Indian Diamond, now nearly a year since?  Circumstances have lately happened which lead to the hope that it may yet be found—­and I am interesting myself, as one of the family, in recovering it.  Among the obstacles in my way, there is the necessity of collecting again all the evidence which was discovered at the time, and more if possible.  There are peculiarities in this case which make it desirable to revive my recollection of everything that happened in the house, on the evening of Miss Verinder’s birthday.  And I venture to appeal to her late mother’s friends who were present on that occasion, to lend me the assistance of their memories——­”

I had got as far as that in rehearsing my explanatory phrases, when I was suddenly checked by seeing plainly in Mr. Candy’s face that my experiment on him was a total failure.

The little doctor sat restlessly picking at the points of his fingers all the time I was speaking.  His dim watery eyes were fixed on my face with an expression of vacant and wistful inquiry very painful to see.  What he was thinking of, it was impossible to divine.  The one thing clearly visible was that I had failed, after the first two or three words, in fixing his attention.  The only chance of recalling him to himself appeared to lie in changing the subject.  I tried a new topic immediately.