I was invited to go upstairs.

The front and back drawing-rooms of the house were thrown into one.  Mrs. Eyrecourt was being gently moved backward and forward in a chair on wheels, propelled by her maid; two gentlemen being present, visitors like myself.  In spite of rouge and loosely folded lace and flowing draperies, she presented a deplorable spectacle.  The bodily part of her looked like a dead woman, painted and revived—­while the moral part, in the strongest contrast, was just as lively as ever.

“So glad to see you again, Father Benwell, and so much obliged by your kind inquiries.  I am quite well, though the doctor won’t admit it.  Isn’t it funny to see me being wheeled about, like a child in a perambulator?  Returning to first principles, I call it.  You see it’s a law of my nature that I must go about.  The doctor won’t let me go about outside the house, so I go about inside the house.  Matilda is the nurse, and I am the baby who will learn to walk some of these days.  Are you tired, Matilda?  No?  Then give me another turn, there’s a good creature.  Movement, perpetual movement, is a law of Nature.  Oh, dear no, doctor; I didn’t make that discovery for myself.  Some eminent scientific person mentioned it in a lecture.  The ugliest man I ever saw.  Now back again, Matilda.  Let me introduce you to my friends, Father Benwell.  Introducing is out of fashion, I know.  But I am one of the few women who can resist the tyranny of fashion.  I like introducing people.  Sir John Drone—­Father Benwell.  Father Benwell—­Doctor Wybrow.  Ah, yes, you know the doctor by reputation?  Shall I give you his character?  Personally charming; professionally detestable.  Pardon my impudence, doctor, it is one of the consequences of the overflowing state of my health.  Another turn, Matilda—­and a little faster this time.  Oh, how I wish I was traveling by railway!”

There, her breath failed her.  She reclined in her chair, and fanned herself silently—­for a while.

I was now able to turn my attention to the two visitors.  Sir John Drone, it was easy to see, would be no obstacle to confidential conversation with Mrs. Eyrecourt.  An excellent country gentleman, with the bald head, the ruddy complexion, and the inexhaustible capacity for silence, so familiar to us in English society—­there you have the true description of Sir John.  But the famous physician was quite another sort of man.  I had only to look at him, and to feel myself condemned to small talk while he was in the room.

You have always heard of it in my correspondence, whenever I have been in the wrong.  I was in the wrong again now—­I had forgotten the law of chances.  Capricious Fortune, after a long interval, was about to declare herself again in my favor, by means of the very woman who had twice already got the better of me.  What a recompense for my kind inquiries after Mrs. Eyrecourt!  She recovered breath enough to begin talking again.