Again Beaumaroy had no defense; his nonplussed air confessed that maneuver, too. Mary dropped her rallying tone and went on gravely: “Unless I’m treated with confidence and sincerity, I can’t continue to attend Mr. Saffron.”
“That’s your ultimatum, is it, Doctor Mary?”
She nodded sharply and decisively. Beaumaroy meditated for a few seconds. Then he shook his head regretfully. “It’s no use. I daren’t trust you,” he said.
Mary laughed again, this time in amazed resentment of his impudence. “You can’t trust me! I think it’s the other way round. It seems to me that the boot’s on the other leg.”
“Not as I see it.” Then he smiled slowly, as it were tentatively. “Or would you—I wonder if you could—possibly—well, stand in with me?”
“Are you offering me a—a partnership?” she asked indignantly.
He raised his hand in a seeming protest, and spoke now hastily and in some confusion. “Not as you understand it. I mean, as you probably understand it, from what I said to you that night at the Cottage. There are features in the—well, there are things that I admit have—have passed through my mind, without being what you’d call settled. Oh, yes, without being in the least settled. Well, for the sake of your help and—er—co-operation, those—those features could be dropped. And then perhaps—if only your—your rules and etiquette—”
Mary scornfully cut short his embarrassed pleadings. “There’s a good deal more than rules and etiquette involved. It seems to me that it’s a matter of common honesty rather than of rules and etiquette—”
“Yes, but you don’t understand—”
She cut him short again. “Mr. Beaumaroy, after this, after your suggestion and all the rest of it, there must be an end of all relations between us—professionally and, so far as possible, socially too, please. I don’t want to be self-righteous, but I feel bound to say that you have misunderstood my character.”