The physician got his guinea at each visit, with scrupulous
punctuality; the nurses were well received and were well satisfied,
for no one interfered with their acts but the doctor; and every
ordinary duty of commission was as regularly discharged by my
ancestor, as if the sinking and resigned creature from whom he was
about to be forever separated had been the spontaneous choice of his
young and fresh affections.

When, therefore, a servant entered to say that Dr. Etherington
desired a private interview, my worthy ancestor, who had no
consciousness of having neglected any obligation that became a
friend of church and state, was in no small measure surprised.

"I come, Mr. Goldencalf, on a melancholy duty," said the pious
rector, entering the private cabinet to which his application had
for the first time obtained his admission; "the fatal secret can no
longer be concealed from you, and your wife at length consents that
I shall be the instrument of revealing it."

The Doctor paused; for on such occasions it is perhaps as well to
let the party that is about to be shocked receive a little of the
blow through his own imagination; and busily enough was that of my
poor father said to be exercised on this painful occasion. He grew
pale, opened his eyes until they again filled the sockets into which
they had gradually been sinking for twenty years, and looked a
hundred questions that his tongue refused to put.

"It cannot be, Doctor," he at length querulously said, "that a woman
like Betsey has got an inkling into any of the events connected with
the last great secret expedition, and which have escaped my jealousy