"My father will come to you directly, Mr Poynter," she said quietly.

"Oh, all right; but don't let me drive you away, Miss Chartley. I don't see much society, and chat's pleasant sometimes, ain't it?"

"Of course," said Richmond quietly; "but I thought my brother said you were fond of society."

"Fond of it? yes, of course," said Poynter hastily; and he smoothed his double fringe over his forehead again, where the hairdresser had cut it into a pattern which he had assured him was in the height of fashion, but only with the result of making him look like butcher turned betting-man. "Yes, fond of it," he said again, "and of course I can get plenty with fellows, but--er--ladies' society is what I like."

James Poynter directed at Richmond a smiling leer, one which had proved very successful at more than one metropolitan bar, where he had paved the way for its success with gifts of flowers and a cheap ring or two; but it was utterly lost here, for its intended recipient was looking another way, and as it faded from its inventor's face there was a blank, inane expression left, bordering upon the grotesque.

"You should go more into ladies' society, then, Mr Poynter, as soon as your health permits," said Richmond, with provoking coolness.

"Oh, I'm not ill," he said hastily; and his forehead grew damp as he floundered about, looking fishy now about the eyes and mouth, which opened and shut at intervals, as if to give passage to words which never came. "Felt I was--er--little out of sorts, you know, and thought I'd see the doctor. Let's see, I said so before, didn't I?"

"Yes, I think you did, Mr Poynter. Here is my father."

There was a slight cough just then, the door opened, and the doctor entered, his bland, aristocratic presence contrasting broadly with that of his patient.

"Ah, Poynter," he said, "good-morning. Don't go, my dear; Mr Poynter will come into my consulting-room, I daresay."

"Yes, of course," cried the patient, shaking hands, and forgetting to leave off. "I shall--shall you?--good-morning, Miss Chartley."

He released the doctor's hand, to turn and shake Richmond's which he pressed desperately, and then followed the bland, calm, stately doctor out of the room, when he caught up his hat savagely and ground his teeth in the dark passage.

"I feel just like a fool when I'm with her!" he said to himself. "I never feel so anywhere else. And I ain't a fool. I should just like to see the man who would say I was."

The doctor led the way through the glazed door into the dim surgery, with its rows of bottles, and stoppered glass jars containing unpleasant looking specimens preserved in spirits, all carefully labelled and inscribed in the doctor's own neat hand, but grown yellow with time; and as he closed the door after his patient, the latter's nostrils distended slightly, and an air of disgust chased the inane look as he breathed the unpleasant medicinal druggy air.

"I was just busy over my discovery," continued the doctor blandly, "and I thought as a friend you would not mind coming here--it is the consulting-room, my dear Poynter; and I could go on, and we could chat over your ailment the while."

"Oh, it's all the same to me," said Poynter; and, once out of Richmond's presence, he seemed another being. Instead of carrying his glossy hat in his hand, he had resumed it, and wore it with a vulgar cock; he walked with the swagger of the low-class City man; and his face shone as he whisked out a second crimson silk handkerchief redolent of perfume, and blew his nose with a loud blast, which sounded defiant.

"Here we are," said the doctor, smiling at his patient, as if after a long search he had found the ill which troubled him, and pulled it up by the roots. "Take that chair, my dear Poynter," he continued, pointing to one by the fire, where a bright copper kettle was on the hob, and closing the door, while his patient took off his hat, glanced round the room, and blew the dust off the top of a side table before depositing thereon his new head-covering.

There was a litter on the table, a chemist's set of weights and scales, divers papers, a spatula, pestle and mortar of glass, toy-like in size, and a book with memoranda, and pen and ink.

"Very busy, you see, Poynter; I've nearly completed my task, and in a few months, perhaps weeks, the medical world will be startled by my discovery."

"What are you going to do with it when you've done?"

"Do with it?"

"Yes. Now, if I was you, I should say to a friend, 'Lend me a thou.,'

and then take a little shop, put it up in bottles, with three-halfpenny stamps, and advertise it well as the new patent medicine."

"My dear Mr Poynter!"

"Hold hard, doctor, I haven't done," he cried, speaking in a hard, browbeating manner, as if he were giving orders. "Give it a spanking name, 'Heal-all,' or 'Cure all;' won't do to say Kill-all eh? Haw, haw, haw!"

He burst into a coarse, loud laugh, and the doctor sank back in his chair, with his brows twitching slightly.

"Hold hard, I have it. Nothing like a good name for the fools who swallow everything. Get something out of one of your Greek and Latin physic-books--one of those words like hippocaustus or allegorus, or something they can't understand."

"I do not quite see the force of your argument, my dear Mr Poynter,"

said the doctor blandly.

"Not see? Why, man, it would be patent medicine then, and no one could take it from you. Look at Hannodyne--good stuff, too, when you've got a headache in the morning--Government stamp, to imitate which is forgery!"

"But still, I--"

"Don't see? Nonsense! Make a fortune. You want it. Patients pretty scarce, eh?"

He laughed again offensively, and the doctor winced, but kept up his bland smooth smile.

"And suppose I took your advice, my dear Poynter, where is the friend to lend me a thousand pounds?"

"Ah! where's the friend!" said Poynter, with a meaning look. "P'r'aps I know the friend, if things went as he wanted."

The doctor's face changed slightly, but his visitor was too obtuse to see it.

"And would you suggest that I should--er--preside in the little shop and sell the allegorus?"

"Ah, that ain't a bad name, is it?" said Poynter, giving his head a shake in the stiff collar in which it rested as an egg does in a cup.

"No, not you; not businesslike enough. Make Hendon do that."

"Ah," said the doctor slowly, as he took up the bottle, removed the stopper, and smelled the contents before moistening one finger and tasting it.

"You'll end by poisoning yourself with that stuff, doctor," said Poynter, chuckling.

"No," he said blandly, "no, my dear James Poynter, no; it is a life-giver, not a destroyer. Now, if you were to take, say, twenty drops in water--"

"With sugar?" said Poynter, grinning.

"Yes, with sugar, if you liked. There's no objection to flavouring the vehicle--water."

"Vehicle--water? Why, I never heard of water being called a vehicle!

Thought vehicle meant a carriage or trap."

"In this case the water would be the vehicle, Poynter, and, as I was saying, if you were to take twenty drops of this extract, or rather, compound, you would feel as if a new lease of life were beginning--that everything looked brighter; that nerve and muscle were being strung up; your power of thought greater, and--try a little, my dear sir."

"No, thankye, doctor; but if you've got a drop of brandy in the place and a bottle of soda, you may make it more than twenty drops of that."

"I have some brandy," said the doctor, rising, "but no soda-water. I can mix you a little soda and tartaric acid, though, in a glass of water, and it will have all the effect."

James Poynter showed his great white teeth in a broad grin, threw himself back in the patients' chair, and unhooking his watch-chain, began to swing round the big seal, pencil-case, and sovereign-purse which hung at the end.

"No, thankye, doctor," he said. "Let's have the brandy-and-water, and sugar purissima, as you folks call it now, and you can mix me up a tonic and send it on."

"Certainly, my dear Poynter, certainly," said the doctor, going to a closet, and taking out a spirit decanter, tumbler, and sugar, which he placed upon the stained green-baize table-cover, smilingly looking on afterwards with a little bright copper kettle in his hand as his visitor poured out liberally into his glass.