He took her hand, the lily not of so beautiful a white: Indeed, Madam,
you are very low, said he: but give me leave to say, that you can do more
for yourself than all the faculty can do for you.
He then withdrew to the window. And, after a short conference with the
women, he turned to me, and to Mr. Goddard, at the other window: We can
do nothing here, (speaking low,) but by cordials and nourishment. What
friends has the lady? She seems to be a person of condition; and, ill as
she is, a very fine woman.----A single lady, I presume?
I whisperingly told him she was. That there were extraordinary
circumstances in her case; as I would have apprized him, had I met with
him yesterday: that her friends were very cruel to her; but that she
could not hear them named without reproaching herself; though they were
much more to blame than she.
I knew I was right, said the Doctor. A love-case, Mr. Goddard! a
love-case, Mr. Belford! there is one person in the world who can do her
more service than all the faculty.
Mr. Goddard said he had apprehended her disorder was in her mind; and had
treated her accordingly: and then told the Doctor what he had done: which
he approving of, again taking her charming hand, said, My good young
lady, you will require very little of our assistance. You must, in a
great measure, be your own assistance. You must, in a great measure, be
your own doctress. Come, dear Madam, [forgive me the familiar
tenderness; your aspect commands love as well as reverence; and a father
of children, some of them older than yourself, may be excused for his
familiar address,] cheer up your spirits. Resolve to do all in your
power to be well; and you'll soon grow better.
You are very kind, Sir, said she. I will take whatever you direct. My
spirits have been hurried. I shall be better, I believe, before I am
worse. The care of my good friends here, looking at the women, shall not
meet with an ungrateful return.
The Doctor wrote. He would fain have declined his fee. As her malady,
he said, was rather to be relieved by the soothings of a friend, than by
the prescriptions of a physician, he should think himself greatly
honoured to be admitted rather to advise her in the one character, than
to prescribe to her in the other.
She answered, That she should be always glad to see so humane a man: that
his visits would keep her in charity with his sex: but that, where [sic]
she able to forget that he was her physician, she might be apt to abate
of the confidence in his skill, which might be necessary to effect the
amendment that was the end of his visits.
And when he urged her still further, which he did in a very polite
manner, and as passing by the door two or three times a day, she said she
should always have pleasure in considering him in the kind light he
offered himself to her: that that might be very generous in one person to
offer, which would be as ungenerous in another to accept: that indeed she
was not at present high in circumstance; and he saw by the tender, (which
he must accept of,) that she had greater respect to her own convenience
than to his merit, or than to the pleasure she should take in his visits.
We all withdrew together; and the Doctor and Mr. Goddard having a great
curiosity to know something more of her story, at the motion of the
latter we went into a neighbouring coffee-house, and I gave them, in
confidence, a brief relation of it; making all as light for you as I
could; and yet you'll suppose, that, in order to do but common justice
to the lady's character, heavy must be that light.