She looked up, and perceived me, I thought, with a start.  “So it is you!” she said demurely enough; “you are come at last to give an account of yourself.”

“Are you better, Dorothy?” I asked earnestly.

“Why should you think that I have been ill?” she replied, her fingers going back to the spinet.  “It is a mistake, sir.  Dr. James has given me near a gross of his infamous powders, and is now exploiting another cure.  I have been resting from the fatigues of London, while you have been wearing yourself out.”

“Dr. James himself told me your condition was serious,” I said.

“Of course,” said she; “the worse the disease, the more remarkable the cure, the more sought after the physician.  When will you get over your provincial simplicity?”

I saw there was nothing to be got out of her while in this baffling humour.  I wondered what devil impelled a woman to write one way and talk another.  In her note to me she had confessed her illness.  The words I had formed to say to her were tied on my tongue.  But on the whole I congratulated myself.  She knew how to step better than I, and there were many awkward things between us of late best not spoken of.  But she kept me standing an unconscionable time without a word, which on the whole was cruelty, while she played over some of Dibdin’s ballads.

“Are you in a hurry, sir,” she asked at length, turning on me with a smile, “are you in a hurry to join my Lord March or his Grace of Grafton?  And have you writ Captain Clapsaddle and your Whig friends at home of your new intimacies, of Mr. Fox and my Lord Sandwich?”

I was dumb.

“Yes, you must be wishing to get away,” she continued cruelly, picking up the newspaper.  “I had forgotten this notice.  When I saw it this morning I thought of you, and despaired of a glimpse of you to-day.” (Reading.) “At the Three Hats, Islington, this day, the 10th of May, will be played a grand match at that ancient and much renowned manly diversion called Double Stick by a sect of chosen young men at that exercise from different parts of the West Country, for two guineas given free; those who break the most heads to bear away the prize.  Before the above-mentioned diversion begins, Mr. Sampson and his young German will display alternately on one, two, and three horses, various surprising and curious feats of famous horsemanship in like manner as at the Grand Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon.  Admittance one shilling each person.’  Before you leave, Mr. Richard,” she continued, with her eyes still on the sheet, “I should like to talk over one or two little matters.”

“Dolly—!”

“Will you sit, sir?”

I sat down uneasily, expecting the worst.  She disappointed me, as usual.

“What an unspeakable place must you keep in Dover Street!  I cannot send even a footman there but what he comes back reeling.”

I had to laugh at this.  But there was no smile out of my lady.