that Blanche was ill I was at my post. Duty will always
find me ready, Sir Patrick, to my dying day. Shocking as the whole thing
was, I presided calmly over the screams and sobs of my step-daughter.
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 hi