'I like your appearance,' said that lady, ringing a little bell.
'Alphonse, request your master to come here.'

The page disappeared on this errand, and after a short interval, during
which not a word was spoken on either side, opened the door for an
important gentleman of about eight-and-thirty, of rather plebeian
countenance, and with a very light head of hair, who leant over Mrs
Wititterly for a little time, and conversed with her in whispers.

'Oh!' he said, turning round, 'yes. This is a most important matter. Mrs
Wititterly is of a very excitable nature; very delicate, very fragile; a
hothouse plant, an exotic.'

'Oh! Henry, my dear,' interposed Mrs Wititterly.

'You are, my love, you know you are; one breath--' said Mr W., blowing
an imaginary feather away. 'Pho! you're gone!'

The lady sighed.

'Your soul is too large for your body,' said Mr Wititterly. 'Your
intellect wears you out; all the medical men say so; you know that there
is not a physician who is not proud of being called in to you. What
is their unanimous declaration? "My dear doctor," said I to Sir Tumley
Snuffim, in this very room, the very last time he came. "My dear doctor,
what is my wife's complaint? Tell me all. I can bear it. Is it nerves?"
"My dear fellow," he said, "be proud of that woman; make much of her;
she is an ornament to the fashionable world, and to you. Her complaint
is soul. It swells, expands, dilates--the blood fires, the pulse