Ross did indeed feel that he was ‘ill’ with love for Jane Adeane. His dreams were haunted by visions of her alabaster body. When he worked beside her, the soft perfume of her hair so beguiled his senses that he sometimes lost concentration and had to pause in the middle of a cupping or a cutting. He understood, too, what a clever nurse she was and allowed himself to rhapsodise over the brilliant practice he would be able to set up, outside the shadow cast by Sir William Adeane, with the Angel of the Baths at his side. He saw money flowing to him in a shining river.

But now he had made a fatal blunder.

All of his sexual and monetary ambition had led to a shockingly inappropriate proposal of marriage in Mrs Morrissey’s tea rooms. After stammering out his feelings of adoration, Valentine Ross had said, ‘Of course I will do everything as it should be done. I will go to your father and ask for your hand. But I need to know from you if my suit finds favour with you.’

Miss Jane had said nothing for a moment, but only looked him up and down with disapproval, as though he might have been a child who had buttoned his clothes all wrong.

‘Oh, your suit,’ said Miss Jane, at last. ‘Well I like your frock coat well enough, but I am not certain that the waistcoat is not a little loud – for a doctor, you know …’

Ross had been dismayed to realise that she was mocking him, as he knew she might – for her wit was keen and mockery was Miss Jane’s instinctive choice in any conversation. But he wished she had not yielded to the temptation to use it here.

‘Do not mock me,’ he had pleaded. ‘I love you, Jane. I think I have loved you for so long that it is beginning to hurt me, and so I’m seeking out this remedy.’

‘Remedy,’ she said, after a while. ‘That is a peculiar word to use.’

‘It is the right word,’ said Ross. ‘My love for you is a kind of malady, from which I know I will not recover. I will only be cured if you agree to marry me.’

‘Ah,’ said Jane. ‘So now it is the humble nurse who must find a cure for the doctor?’

‘Yes! Take pity on me, Jane. Do you remember when we attended a recital of Chopin preludes at the Assembly Rooms last autumn, and you—’

‘Oh yes. I very much like the melancholy of Chopin. I know it isn’t to some people’s taste, but I feel, really, that this is their loss, and—’

‘And you wore a scarlet gown and some tall contrivance in your hair …’

‘Contrivance? It wasn’t a “contrivance”. It was a peacock’s feather.’

‘Was it? Well, my brother would have recognised it, I’m certain, but I did not. All I know is that I longed to touch the plume, to touch your hair. And then to feel your hand in mine. And ever since that moment, this malady of love has been with me and all I want is to make you mine.’