Henry begged him to look at it, and see if it would do.

The doctor read it.  “Hum!” said he, “it is a very pretty, filial letter, and increases my interest in you; give me your hand:  there.  Well, it won’t do:  too shaky.  If your mother once sees this, I may talk till doomsday, she’ll not believe a word.  You must put off writing till to-morrow night.  Now give me her address, for I really must get home.”

“She lives on the second floor, No. 13 Chettle Street.”

“Her name?”

“Sir, if you ask for the lady that lodges on the second floor, you will be sure to see her.”

Dr. Amboyne looked a little surprised, and not very well pleased, at what seemed a want of confidence.  But he was a man singularly cautious and candid in forming his judgments; so he forbore all comment, and delivered his final instructions.  “Here is a bottle containing only a few drops of faba Ignatii in water, it is an innocent medicine, and has sometimes a magical effect in soothing the mind and nerves.  A table-spoonful three times a day.  And this is a sedative, which you can take if you find yourself quite unable to sleep.  But I wouldn’t have recourse to it unnecessarily; for these sedatives are uncertain in their operation; and, when a man is turned upside down, as you have been, they sometimes excite.  Have a faint light in your bedroom.  Tie a cord to the bell-rope, and hold it in your hand all night.  Fix your mind on that cord, and keep thinking, ’This is to remind me that I am eleven miles from Hillsborough, in a peaceful village, safe from all harm.’  To-morrow, walk up to the top of Cairnhope Peak, and inhale the glorious breeze, and look over four counties.  Write to your mother at night, and, meantime, I’ll do my best to relieve her anxiety.  Good-by.”

Memory sometimes acts like an old flint-gun:  it hangs fire, yet ends by going off.  While Dr. Amboyne was driving home, the swarthy, but handsome, features of the workman he had befriended seemed to enter his mind more deeply than during the hurry, and he said to himself, “Jet black hair; great black eyes; and olive skin; they are rare in these parts; and, somehow, they remind me a little of her.”

Then his mind went back, in a moment, over many years, to the days when he was stalwart, but not unwieldy, and loved a dark but peerless beauty, loved her deeply, and told his love, and was esteemed and pitied, but another was beloved.

And so sad, yet absorbing, was the retrospect of his love, his sorrow, and her own unhappy lot, that it blotted out of his mind, for a time, the very youth whose features and complexion had launched him into the past.

But the moment his horse’s feet rang on the stones, this burly philosopher shook off the past, and set himself to recover lost time.  He drove rapidly to several patients, and, at six o’clock, was at 13 Chettle Street, and asked for the lady on the second floor, “Yes, sir:  she is at home,” was the reply.  “But I don’t know; she lives very retired.  She hasn’t received any visits since they came.  However, they rent the whole floor, and the sitting-room fronts you.”