and her left.

The guest on her left was Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.

This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the drawback,
however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of
his joke, and of his plunging in rather a headlong manner into talk
with strangers, without waiting to feel his way first. In society he was
constantly making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by
the ears together. In his medical practice he was a more prudent man;
picking up his discretion (as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct,
and proving to be generally right where more carefully conducted doctors
turned out to be wrong.

What HE said about the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way
of a mystification or joke. He gravely entreated her (in the interests
of science) to let him take it home and burn it. "We will first heat it,
Miss Rachel," says the doctor, "to such and such a degree; then we
will expose it to a current of air; and, little by little--puff!--we
evaporate the Diamond, and spare you a world of anxiety about the safe
keeping of a valuable precious stone!" My lady, listening with rather a
careworn expression on her face, seemed to wish that the doctor had been
in earnest, and that he could have found Miss Rachel zealous enough in
the cause of science to sacrifice her birthday gift.

The other guest, who sat on my young lady's right hand, was an eminent
public character--being no other than the celebrated Indian traveller,
Mr. Murthwaite, who, at risk of his life, had penetrated in disguise
where no European had ever set foot before.