Here he looked at Miss Vivian to the imminent peril of his self-control.
Mrs. Moon's gaze had embraced them in a common condemnation, and the
subtle sympathy of their youth linked them closer and made them one in
their intimate appreciation of her.
"Then you must be a very singular young man. I thought you doctors were
never happy until you'd found some mare's nest in people's constitutions?
You'd much better let well alone."
"Miss Quincey is very far from well," said Cautley with recovered
gravity, "and I rather fancy she has been let alone too long."
Cautley thought that he had said quite enough to alarm any old lady. And
indeed Mrs. Moon was slowly taking in the idea of disaster, and it sent
her poor wits wandering in the past. Her voice sank suddenly from
grating; antagonism to pensive garrulity.
"I've no faith in medicine," she quavered, "nor in medical men either.
Though to be sure my husband had a brother-in-law once on his wife's
side, Dr. Quincey, Dr. Arnold Quincey, Juliana's father and Louisa's. He
was a medical man. He wrote a book, I daresay you've heard of it;
_Quincey on Diseases of the Heart_ it was. But he's dead now, of one of
'em, poor man. We haven't seen a doctor for five-and-twenty years.
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