"Tell me what you talked about, won't you?" Mrs. Chard continued. "It's being kept in the dark in my own house that I hate so much. It isn't fair--do you think it is? For, after all, though I am not strong I do take an interest in things."
"I didn't say much. Mr. Chard talked a good deal--principally about you."
"Oh, indeed; and what did he say? Told you all sorts of naughty things, I suppose?"
The spectacle of this elderly woman waxing coquettish on the subject of her husband filled Isla with a curious mixture of pity and amusement.
"No. He was chiefly trying to impress on me the fact that you are very ill and that you require to be kept quiet and not worried in the least."
"Dear Edgar! he is most considerate! He quite spoils me."
"I was very much surprised to hear that you had no doctor in attendance, Mrs. Bodley-Chard. Wouldn't it be better for you to see some one?"
Mrs. Bodley-Chard uplifted her hands in mute protest.
"Doctors! I've spent fortunes on them, and they've never done me the smallest good. The last one I had--a man from Mount Street, a very new broom who was going to sweep the West End quite clean--quarrelled with Edgar. What do you think? He actually had the audacity to say that there was nothing whatever the matter with me and that, if I were a poor woman who had to get my living, I should be going about quite well."
Isla privately wished she knew that doctor. She felt sure that she should like him.