Note 93 — Chapter XII · THE ROYAL INFIRMARY
Reading edition
The following scrap has been inadvertently preserved. There is not even any certain indication to whom it is addressed:
“When I came into the Anatomical room and saw you sitting there dissecting, I was overpowered,—utterly conquered. When I spoke to you and you looked up at me to answer, the look you gave me was the coup de mort!—I determined then in my own mind to seek you for my wife....
But to see you as you were then with your superlative beauty, working so bravely, so sensibly,—all fashion, frivolity and folly cast aside,—was to me so new, so strange and so admirable a sight, that on considering and re-considering it, I don’t wonder at myself for flinging aside ordinary prudence to make a snatch at a jewel of such unusual brilliancy.”
It is almost disappointing to reflect that the recipient of this tribute was not equally prepared to “fling aside ordinary prudence.”