o be more serious than an ordinary
fainting-fit; and Lord Hartledon, remembering the suspicion of
heart-disease, sent for the family doctor Sir Alexander Pepps, an
oracle in the fashionable world.

A different result showed itself--equally caused by excitement--and the
countess-dowager arrived in a day or two in hot haste. Lady Hartledon lay
in bed, and did not attempt to get up or to get better. She lay almost as
one without life, taking no notice of any one, turning her head from her
husband when he entered, refusing to answer her mother, keeping the
children away from the room.

"Why doesn't she get up, Pepps?" demanded the dowager, wrathfully,
pouncing upon the physician one day, when he was leaving the house.

Sir Alexander, who might have been supposed to have received his
baronetcy for his skill, but that titles, like kissing, go by favour,
stopped short, took off his hat, and presumed that Lady Hartledon felt
more comfortable in bed.

"Rubbish! We might all lie in bed if we studied comfort. Is there any
earthly reason why she should stay there, Pepps?"

"Not any, except weakness."

"Except idleness, you mean. Why don't you order her to get up?"

"I have advised Lady Hartledon to do so, and she does not attend to me,"
replied Sir Alexander.

"Oh," said the dowager. "She was always wilful. What about her heart?"

"Her heart!" echoed Sir Alexander, looking up now as if a little aroused.

"Dear me, yes; her heart; I didn't say her liver. Is it sound, Pepps?"

"It's sound, for anything I know to the contrary. I never suspected
anything the matter with her heart."

"Then you are a fool!" retorted the complimentary dowager.

Sir Alexander's temperament was remarkably calm. Nothing could rouse
him out of his tame civility, which had been taken more than once for
obsequiousness. The countess-dowager had patronized him in earlier years,
when he was not a great man, or had begun to dream of becoming one.

"Don't you recollect I once consulted you on the subject--what's your
memory good for? She was a girl then, of fourteen or so; and you were
worth fifty of what you are now, in point of discernment."

The oracle carried his thoughts back, and really could not recollect it.
"Ahem! yes; and the result was--was--"

"The result was that you said the heart had nothing the matter with it,
and I said it had," broke in the impatient dowager.

"Ah, yes, madam, I remember. Pray, have you reason to suspect anything