“Anything more?” she contemptuously asked.

“And Walter will not need it,” he continued persuasively, passing her question as unheard.  “As my son, he will be amply provided for.”

A very commonplace interruption occurred, and the subject was dropped.  Nothing more than a servant bringing in a letter for his master, just come by hand.

“Why, it is from old Richard Pratt!” exclaimed Mr. Hamlyn, as he turned to the light.

“I thought Major Pratt never wrote letters,” she remarked.  “I once heard you say he must have forgotten how to write.”

He did not answer.  He was reading the note, which appeared to be a short one.  She watched him.  After reading it through he began it again, a puzzled look upon his face.  Then she saw it flush all over, and he crushed the note into his pocket.

“What is it about, Philip?”

“Pratt wants a prescription for gout that I told him of.  I’m sure I don’t know whether I can find it.”

He had answered in a dreamy tone with thoughts preoccupied, and quitted the room hastily, as if to search for it.

Eliza wondered why he should flush up at being asked for a prescription, and why he should have suddenly lost himself in a reverie.  But she had not much curiosity as to anything that concerned old Major Pratt—­who was at present staying in lodgings in London.

Downstairs went Mr. Hamlyn to the little room he called his library, seated himself at the table under the lamp, and opened the note again.  It ran as follows: 

“DEAR PHILIP HAMLYN,—­The other day, when calling here, you spoke of some infallible prescription to cure gout that had been given you.  I’ve symptoms of it flying about me—­and be hanged to it!  Bring it to me yourself to-morrow; I want to see you. I suppose there was no mistake in the report that that ship did go down?—­and that none of the passengers were saved from it?

“Truly yours,

“RICHARD PRATT.”

“What can he possibly mean?” muttered Philip Hamlyn.

But there was no one to answer the question, and he sat buried in thought, trying to answer it himself.  Starting up from the useless task, he looked in his desk, found the infallible prescription, and then snatched his watch from his pocket.

“Too late,” he decided impatiently; “Pratt would be gone to bed.  He goes at all kinds of unearthly hours when out of sorts.”  So he went upstairs to his wife again, the prescription displayed in his hand.

Morning came, bringing the daily routine of duties in its train.  Mrs. Hamlyn had made an engagement to go with some friends to Blackheath, to take luncheon with a lady living there.  It was damp and raw in the early portion of the day, but promised to be clear later on.

“And then my little darling can go out to play again,” she said, hugging the child to her.  “In the afternoon, nurse; it will be drier then; it is really too damp this morning.”