But you and I will remain good friends; and that it may
be so, we will say nothing of Whig and Tory."
"Not I," said the doctor, receiving his fee, and taking his hat;
"a Carolus serves my purpose as well as a Willielmus. But I
should like to know why old Lady Saint Ringan, and all that set,
go about wasting their decayed lungs in puffing this foreign
fellow."
"Ay--you had best set him down a Jesuit, as Scrub says." On
these terms they parted.
The poor patient--whose nerves, from an extraordinary state of
tension, had at length become relaxed in as extraordinary a
degree--continued to struggle with a sort of imbecility, the
growth of superstitious terror, when the shocking tidings were
brought from Holland which fulfilled even her worst expectations.
They were sent by the celebrated Earl of Stair, and contained the
melancholy event of a duel betwixt Sir Philip Forester and his
wife's half-brother, Captain Falconer, of the Scotch-Dutch, as
they were then called, in which the latter had been killed. The
cause of quarrel rendered the incident still more shocking. It
seemed that Sir Philip had left the army suddenly, in consequence
of being unable to pay a very considerable sum which he had lost
to another volunteer at play.
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