She pulled on a silken robe and rushed to answer. The sight which greeted her was troubling. A carriage was driving off, but its former occupant, Mr Latimer lay prostrate on the steps of 28 Henrietta Street. The glue merchant’s wife was bending over him, unable to stifle her sobbing but yet endeavouring to rally her husband, addressing him as ‘Mr Latimer’, quite as though this odd formality might be the very thing to stiffen his weakened sinews.

‘Mr Latimer,’ she wailed, ‘for pity’s sake, try to rise up, for I cannot lift you, all lean and thin as you have become …’

Jane asked Mrs Latimer what had happened and the woman reached up to her and pleaded, ‘Help us, Miss Jane! Mr Latimer was in the hospital, but this morning I was summoned there because he was crawling round on the floor, among all the unmentionable mess, asking for a chaise to bring him here. And when the nurses tried to restrain him, he attempted to strike them. He was crying out that only you could save him.’

Jane knelt down and used all her considerable strength to hoist Mr Latimer’s inert form into her arms. His head, which seemed to her shrunken in size, lolled on her shoulder. Jane carried him into the house and laid him on the couch in Sir William’s surgery. His body was very cold. His eyes rolled in their sockets. Instructing Mrs Latimer to fetch a blanket from an oaken chest, Jane put a steadying hand on Mr Latimer’s cheek and leaned towards him until her face was close to his. His breath was sour and all colour had drained from his cheeks. For a moment, Jane wondered if he had died in those brief moments when she was carrying him between the front door and the surgery, but no, his eyes still moved and when they focused on Jane, his mouth moved, trying to form words. But he could not form them. The attempt seemed to choke him and he coughed up some phlegm, dyed pink with blood.

‘Mr Latimer,’ said Jane, gently wiping the blood from Latimer’s chin, ‘you are at Henrietta Street. You are safe with me. I am going to make up a balsam for your lung and then you will breathe more easily.’

‘No use,’ whispered Latimer, ‘too late.’

‘No,’ said Jane firmly. ‘It is not too late. Now here is your dear wife, who will hold your hand while I prepare the balsam. Then you will see what excellent properties it contains …’

‘Properties?’ said Latimer.

The faint suggestion of a smile moved the corners of Latimer’s mouth, and she felt the pathos in the fact that the word ‘properties’ had snagged at his heart. He gaped beseechingly at Jane, as if to say ‘let me live! Let me inhabit my new property and rejoice in its perfectly crafted sash windows, its floral ceiling roses!’ She knew that it was said in Bath that if you could hold the gaze of the Angel of the Baths for long enough to feel its power, then you might be cured by this alone. Yet Jane now realised that, since meeting Julietta, she herself was easily distracted, and could feel her own impatience to turn away from the stare of strangers.