DEAR DR. ARKROYD:
Mr. Saffron is unwell, and I have insisted 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 color to such an accusation. “Mr. Saffron has sent for me—professionally. He’s ill, it seems,” she said to Cynthia.
“Why shouldn’t he?”
“Because he is a patient of Dr. Irechester, not a patient of mine.”
“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.
Suddenly she recollected that he had also seemed to hint that they were more alarming than Irechester appeared to appreciate; she had not taken much notice of that hint at the time, but now it recurred to her very distinctly. There was no suggestion of the sort in Beaumaroy’s letter. Beaumaroy had written a letter that could be shown to Irechester! Was that dishonesty, or only a pardonable diplomacy?