d friend
seemed to be always amused, never offended?

As for the doctor's behaviour to his patient, it was, in Fanny's
estimation, worthy of a savage.

He appeared to feel no sort of interest in the man who had been sent to
him from the hospital at his own request, and whose malady it was
supposed to be the height of his ambition to cure. When Mr. Oxbye
described his symptoms, Mr. Vimpany hardly even made a pretence at
listening. With a frowning face he applied the stethoscope, felt the
pulse, looked at the tongue--and drew his own conclusions in sullen
silence. If the nurse had a favourable report to make, he brutally
turned his back on her. If discouraging results of the medical
treatment made their appearance at night, and she felt it a duty to
mention them, he sneered as if he doubted whether she was speaking the
truth. Mr. Oxbye's inexhaustible patience and amiability made endless
allowances for his medical advisor. "It is my misfortune to keep my
devoted doctor in a state of perpetual anxiety," he used to say; "and
we all know what a trial to the temper is the consequence of unrelieved
suspense. I believe in Mr. Vimpany." Fanny was careful not to betray
her own opinion by making any reply; her doubts of the doctor had, by
this time, become terrifying doubts even to herself. Whenever an
opportunity favoured her, she vigilantly watched him. One of his ways
of finding amusement, in his leisure hours, was in the use of a
photographic apparatus. He took little pictures of the rooms in the
cottage, which were followed by views in the garden. Those having come
to an end, he completed the mystification of the nurse by producing a
portrait of the Dane, while he lay asleep one day after he had been
improving in health for some little time past. Fanny asked leave to
look at the likeness when it had been "printed" from the negative, in
the garden. He first examined it himself--and then deliberately tore it
up and let the fragments fly away in the wind. "I am not satisfied with
it," was all the explanation he offered. One of the garden chairs
happened to be near him; he sat down, and looked like a man in a state
of torment under his own angry thoughts.

If the patient's health had altered for the worse, and if the tendency
to relapse had proved to be noticeable after medicine had been
administered, Fanny's first suspicions might have taken a very serious
turn. But the change in Oxbye--sleeping in purer air and sustained by