e Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say sixty thousand
pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be
actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always
tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in
Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling, his
health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.

There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings' health does break down in,
generally, a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act of
officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart,
it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or
oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a
sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to
resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and his
eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange
shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room,
leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This
occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis now, he
always takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and to
supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly
incapacitated.

When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the
vicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly,
he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is always
perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of
course. We shall see.

Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentlemanlike man. People, however, remark
something odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thing
which certainly contributes to it, people I think don't remember; or,
perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost immediately. Mr. Jennings
has a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed
the movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. It
occurs now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as I
have said, to his manner, and in this glance travelling along the floor
there is something both shy and anxious.

A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating
theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched
and scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently infinitely
more minuteness th