The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of Midsummer Eve brought a visitor to Fitzpiers's door; a voice that he knew sounded in the passage.

Mr.Melbury had called.

At first he had a particular objection to enter the parlor, because his boots were dusty, but as the surgeon insisted he waived the point and came in.
Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers himself, he put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied gaze at the floor, he said, "I've called to ask you, doctor, quite privately, a question that troubles me.

I've a daughter, Grace, an only daughter, as you may have heard.

Well, she's been out in the dew--on Midsummer Eve in particular she went out in thin slippers to watch some vagary of the Hintock maids--and she's got a cough, a distinct hemming and hacking, that makes me uneasy.