Dale is ill?"
"I do, indeed; and he confesses as much himself, though he makes light
of the matter. He talks of low fever. I cannot tell you how much he has
alarmed me."
"There may be nothing serious in it," answered Miss Brewer, with some
hesitation. "One is so apt to take alarm about trifles which a doctor
would laugh at. I dare say Mr. Dale only requires change of air. A
London life is not calculated to improve any one's health."
"Perhaps that is the cause of his altered appearance," replied Paulina,
only too glad to be reassured as to her lover's safety. "I will beg him
to take change of air. But he has promised to see a doctor to-morrow:
when he comes to me in the afternoon I shall hear what the doctor has
said."
Douglas Dale was very much inclined to make light of the slight
symptoms of ill-health which had oppressed him for some time--a
languor, a sense of thirst and fever, which were very wearing in their
effect, but which he attributed to the alternations of excitement and
agitation that he had undergone of late.
He was, however, too much a man of honour to break the promise made to
Paulina.
He went early on the following morning to Savile Row, where he called
upon Dr. Harley Westbrook, a physician of some eminence, to whom he
carefully described the symptoms of which he had complained to Paulina.
"I do not consider myself really ill," he said, in conclusion; "but I
have come to you in obedience to the wish of a friend.
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