"Was that suggestion right?" repeated the doctor.
"Yes, quite," said the other frankly.
"Just so. Eventually you did trust me, or, at any rate, behaved as if you did, and you found your confidence not misplaced. You awoke, in fact, after a good night's rest. And now, if you grant that, you owe me the benefit of a doubt."
"Well?"
"I ask you to trust me again," said the doctor, "for the fact is I have already written to your friend myself, telling him not to expect a letter from you yet. I knew, I was completely certain, that you would find it impossible to write to him, and it seemed to me that if I wrote at once, as I did, it would save him some anxious hours. That is my confession."
Again Harry tried to feel what he told himself was a just resentment, but the sentiment that he raised in his mind was but a phantom. He ought, so he considered, to feel that his liberty was being tampered with, but this curiously self-possessed man appeared to have the gift of impeccable meddling. Then he laughed outright.
"I simply do not know what to say to you," he said. "You take it upon yourself to interfere with affairs of mine that do not in the least concern you, and yet I don't really resent it."
"In that you are quite wise," remarked the doctor.
Harry threw down his pen.
"And not content with that, you patronize me, and pat me on the back," he said. "I am not at all sure that I intend to stand it. Pray, if I may so far interfere in your concerns, what did you say to Geoffrey?" he asked, with a show of spirit.