“Oh, Doctor,” cried Hedwig, “you pierced my vein through and through; my foot hurts me so, instead of waltzing, I shall hardly be able to limp about a little.” The physician was perfectly confounded: in vain did he scrutinize the faces of all three ladies; he could not remember to have ever before seen them. “Your Ladyship,” said he, at length, “doubtless must take me for somebody else, for I am not aware that I had ever the honour of meeting you till this hour. I do not know Lord Giantdale; I never quit Carlsbad during the season.”
The Countess, at a loss to understand this preposterous incognito of the Doctor’s, at last began to imagine that, contrary to the custom of his colleagues, he wished to decline any remuneration for the skill and care they had already experienced at his hands. Under this impression, she said: “I understand you, my dear Doctor, but you carry your delicacy too far; nothing shall prevent my acknowledging myself your debtor, and proving my grateful sense of the assistance you have already afforded me;” and therewith she forced a rich gold snuff-box upon the Doctor, who, accepting it as a payment in advance, and reluctant to offend so promising a patient, quietly put it in his pocket. He now judged the whole family to be suffering under one of those nervous disorders, which produce such extraordinary effects upon the imagination, and under this impression ordered them gentle aperients.
