BELGRAVIA. MAT APRIL 1878. By Proxy. BY JAMES PAYN. CHAPTER XLV. A GOOD SON. ATTERS were so serious with Ralph Pennicuick that night, that Raymond occupied a bedroom at his father's chambers, but he accompanied Dr. Green on his way home to have a few minutes' private talk with him: a doctor being always reticent, but in the presence of other doctors absolutely dumb. 'It is a very bad case, I fear, Dr. Green,' said Raymond with grave abruptness. 'It is a complicated and serious one,' was the reply. 'How can you possibly account for such an extraordinary hallucination as that which my poor father labours under?' cases. It is not at all extraordinary, my dear young sir, if you use the word in the sense of uncommon; I have seen a hundred such You observed, I dare say, that I did not attempt to reason with the patient: nor even make any remark with respect to the absurdity of his conviction. The fact is, I did not wish my professional brethren to know that the person he was speaking of was dead. 'Why?' 'Well, I consider myself a friend of the family, and though of course these things are supposed among us to go no farther, it is always best to be on the safe side. Your father may recover, you see 'Indeed I hope so,' put in the young man quickly. 'Just so then it is better to keep things quiet. It is said by a great philosopher-but who did not have the advantage of being a student of medicine that where a man takes his ideas for facts, and what he imagines for things, that man is mad. But this is not always the case. The hallucination sometimes arises from a less hopeless but still a very serious cause. I am about to ask you a VOL. XXXV. NO. CXXXVIII. K |