He said the patient’s brain might be irritable for some days, and no women in silk dresses or crinoline, or creaking shoes, must enter the room.  He told her the nurse was evidently a clumsy woman, and would be letting things fall.  She had better get some old soldier used to nursing.  “And don’t whisper in the room,” said he; “nothing irritates them worse; and don’t let anybody play a piano within hearing; but in a day or two you may try him with slow and continuous music on the flute or violin if you like.  Don’t touch his bed suddenly; don’t sit on it or lean on it.  Dole sunlight into his room by degrees; and when he can bear it, drench him with it.  Never mind what the old school tell you.  About these things they know a good deal less than nothing.”

Lady Cicely received all this like an oracle.

The cure was telegraphed to Dr. Barr, and he was requested to settle the fee.  He was not the man to undersell the profession, and was jealous of nobody, having a large practice, and a very wealthy wife.  So he telegraphed back—­“Fifty guineas, and a guinea a mile from London.”

So, as Christopher Staines sat at an early breakfast, with the carriage waiting to take him to the train, two notes were brought him on a salver.

They were both directed by Lady Cicely Treherne.  One of them contained a few kind and feeling words of gratitude and esteem; the other, a check, drawn by the earl’s steward, for one hundred and thirty guineas.

He bowled up to London, and told it all to Rosa.  She sparkled with pride, affection, and joy.

“Now, who says you are not a genius?” she cried.  “A hundred and thirty guineas for one fee!  Now, if you love your wife as she loves you—­you will set up a brougham.”

CHAPTER VIII.

Doctor Staines begged leave to distinguish; he had not said he would set up a carriage at the first one hundred guinea fee, but only that he would not set up one before.  There are misguided people who would call this logic:  but Rosa said it was equivocating, and urged him so warmly that at last he burst out, “Who can go on forever saying ‘No,’ to the only creature he loves?”—­and caved.  In forty-eight hours more a brougham waited at Mrs. Staines’s door.  The servant engaged to drive it was Andrew Pearman, a bachelor, and, hitherto, an under-groom.  He readily consented to be coachman, and to do certain domestic work as well.  So Mrs. Staines had a man-servant as well as a carriage.

Ere long, three or four patients called, or wrote, one after the other.  These Rosa set down to brougham, and crowed; she even crowed to Lady Cicely Treherne, to whose influence, and not to brougham’s, every one of these patients was owing.  Lady Cicely kissed her, and demurely enjoyed the poor soul’s self-satisfaction.

Staines himself, while he drove to or from these patients, felt more sanguine, and buoyed as he was by the consciousness of ability, began to hope he had turned the corner.