She was ailing again; so as Frejus had agreed with her once, Rose thought it might again.

"She would send for them back directly." "No," said the doctor, "why do that?
I will go over there and see them." Accordingly, a day or two after this, he hired a carriage, and went off early in the morning to Frejus.

In so small a place he expected to find the young ladies at once; but, to his surprise, no one knew them nor had heard of them.

He was at a nonplus, and just about to return home and laugh at himself and the baroness for this wild-goose chase, when he fell in with a face he knew, one Mivart, a surgeon, a young man of some talent, who had made his acquaintance in Paris.

Mivart accosted him with great respect; and, after the first compliments, informed him that he had been settled some months in this little town, and was doing a fair stroke of business.
"Killing some, and letting nature cure others, eh ?" said the doctor; then, having had his joke, he told Mivart what had brought him to Frejus.
"Are they pretty women, your friends?
I think I know all the pretty women about," said Mivart with levity.