Mary glanced round at her. Cynthia laughed and blushed. "Isn't he splendid?" Cynthia murmured. "But I don't like Mr. Beaumaroy at all, do you?"
"I say yes to the first question, but I'm not quite ready to answer the second," said Mary with a laugh.
Three days later, on Christmas Eve, one whom Jeanne, who caught sight of him in the hall, described as being all there was possible of ugliness, delivered (with a request for an immediate answer) the following note for Mary Arkroyd:
"Dear Dr. Arkroyd,
Mr. Saffron is unwell, and I have insisted with him that he must see a doctor. So much he has yielded—after a fight! But nothing will induce him to see Dr. Irechester again. On this point I tried to reason with him, but in vain. He is obstinate and resolved. I am afraid that I am putting you in a difficult and disagreeable position, but it seems to me that I have no alternative but to ask you to call on him professionally. I hope that Dr. Irechester will not be hurt by a whim which is, no doubt, itself merely a symptom of disordered nerves, for Dr. Irechester has been most attentive, and very successful hitherto in dealing with the dear old gentleman. But my first duty is to Mr. Saffron. If it will ease matters at all, pray hold yourself at liberty to show this note to Dr. Irechester. May I beg you to be kind enough to call at your earliest convenience, though it is, alas, a rough evening to ask you to come out?
Yours very faithfully,
Hector Beaumaroy"
"How very awkward!" exclaimed Mary. She had prided herself on a rigorous abstention from "poaching"; she fancied that men were very ready to accuse women of not "playing the game" and had been resolved to give no colour to such an accusation. "Mr. Saffron has sent for me—professionally. He's ill, it seems," she said to Cynthia.
"Why shouldn't he?"
"He's a patient of Dr. Irechester's."
"But people often change their doctors, don't they? He thinks you're cleverer, I suppose, and I expect you are, really."
There was no use in expounding professional etiquette to Cynthia. Mary had to decide the point for herself—and quickly; the old man might be seriously ill. Beaumaroy had said, at the Naylors', that his attacks were sometimes alarming.