I closed my ears to the profane violence of her language.  I set the necessary example, as an English gentlewoman at the head of her household.  It was only when I distinctly heard the name of a person, never to be mentioned again in my family circle, issue (if I may use the expression) from Blanche’s lips that I began to be really alarmed.  I said to my maid:  ’Hopkins, this is not Hysteria.  This is a possession of the devil.  Fetch the chloroform.’”

Chloroform, applied in the capacity of an exorcism, was entirely new to Sir Patrick.  He preserved his gravity with considerable difficulty.  Lady Lundie went on: 

“Hopkins is an excellent person—­but Hopkins has a tongue.  She met our distinguished medical guest in the corridor, and told him.  He was so good as to come to the door.  I was shocked to trouble him to act in his professional capacity while he was a visitor, an honored visitor, in my house.  Besides, I considered it more a case for a clergyman than for a medical man.  However, there was no help for it after Hopkins’s tongue.  I requested our eminent friend to favor us with—­I think the exact scientific term is—­a Prognosis.  He took the purely material view which was only to be expected from a person in his profession.  He prognosed—­am I right?  Did he prognose? or did he diagnose?  A habit of speaking correctly is so important, Sir Patrick! and I should be so grieved to mislead you!”

“Never mind, Lady Lundie!  I have heard the medical report.  Don’t trouble yourself to repeat it.”

“Don’t trouble myself to repeat it?” echoed Lady Lundie—­with her dignity up in arms at the bare prospect of finding her remarks abridged.  “Ah, Sir Patrick! that little constitutional impatience of yours!—­Oh, dear me! how often you must have given way to it, and how often you must have regretted it, in your time!”

“My dear lady! if you wish to repeat the report, why not say so, in plain words?  Don’t let me hurry you.  Let us have the prognosis, by all means.”

Lady Lundie shook her head compassionately, and smiled with angelic sadness.  “Our little besetting sins!” she said.  “What slaves we are to our little besetting sins!  Take a turn in the room—­do!”

Any ordinary man would have lost his temper.  But the law (as Sir Patrick had told his niece) has a special temper of its own.  Without exhibiting the smallest irritation, Sir Patrick dextrously applied his sister-in-law’s blister to his sister-in-law herself.

“What an eye you have!” he said.  “I was impatient.  I am impatient.  I am dying to know what Blanche said to you when she got better?”

The British Matron froze up into a matron of stone on the spot.

“Nothing!” answered her ladyship, with a vicious snap of her teeth, as if she had tried to bite the word before it escaped her.

“Nothing!” exclaimed Sir Patrick.