"Your cough doesn't seem to go," he said. "People in the stalls don't want to be reminded of graveyards. It's rather suggestive. You ought to see a doctor."
"I'll find out who my panel doctor is," she said.
"I should prefer you to go to Bernard Meer. Son of the late Sir Morton Meer, you know. Like his father, he's a throat specialist, and not given to charging fees to members of the profession. Say you're at the Pall Mall and mention my name when you see him."
She was reluctant to do as De Freyne wished, but he was insistent, and she promised to call at the Wimpole Street address which he gave her. It seemed rather absurd to go to a specialist for a bottle of cough mixture. She took her slight throat affection as a matter-of-course, a cold induced by the draughts on the stage and the change of temperature to which she was exposed after leaving the theater at night.
When, therefore, she presented herself next morning in Wimpole Street she was in a very apologetic frame of mind. A full waiting-room, testifying to the doctor's importance, did not help to restore her confidence. She was the last to arrive and had a long time to wait. When her turn came to enter the consulting room she was more nervous than she had been when making her first appearance on the stage. She had pictured Dr. Meer as an elderly man, and her discomfiture was all the greater when she found him to be a young one, not over thirty. It may have been prudish—in some respects she was apt to suffer from excess of delicacy—but she had a maidenly dread of the physical examination which she knew she would have to undergo. Hardly had the door closed behind her when she felt that the specialist's keen gray eyes had X-rayed through her sable coat and made a mental photograph of her slightly protruding collarbones.
Schooled to read faces, he saw how nervous she was and wondered at it. Nervousness in De Freyne's young ladies was something of an anachronism.
"Well, what's wrong?" he asked cheerfully.
"Only a cold," she replied. "It seems ridiculous to bother you."
He smiled. For so young a man and an unmarried one his manner was reassuringly paternal. It was not artificial pretentiousness, but genuine and natural to him.
"You ought not to be in the habit of catching cold in such a gorgeous fur coat. We'll have it off, please."