● ● ●  breath of a new promise as her carriage rolled along to the International Hotel where Quimby lived and carried on his work.

Quimby’s daughter Augusta, looking out the window, saw her lifted from the carriage and carried upstairs to her room.¹¹⁴ Shortly afterwards the new arrival made her appearance in the waiting room where Quimby’s patients gathered. Young George Quimby, who had recently returned from the West to act as his father’s secretary, noted her as being tall and “of consumptive appearance” and judged her age to be about thirty-five instead of the forty-one it actually was.¹¹⁵ But Mrs. Patterson’s interest was wholly absorbed by one person, the “doctor” himself, a little man with shrewd, piercing eyes, a genial manner, and a confidence that emanated from him like an electric current.