'Do not speak harshly, my dear madam,' said the doctor, laying his hand upon her arm. 'I am sure you will regret it. Mr. Calverley is very ill, dangerously ill.'
Mrs. Calverley looked up sharply into his face. 'Stop one minute, Doctor Houghton, if you please; I should wish my son, the Reverend Martin Gurwood, to be present at any communication you have to make to me respecting Mr. Calverley. He is somewhere in the house, I know. I will send for him.' And she rang the bell.
'By all means,' said Doctor Haughton, looking helplessly at Mr. Broadbent, and feeling how very much more difficult it would be to tell his white lie, prompted though it was by merciful consideration, in the presence of a clergyman.
In a few minutes Martin Gurwood entered the room. He knew Doctor Houghton, and shook hands with him; bowing to Mr. Broadbent, to whom he was introduced.
'Doctor Houghton was beginning to make some communication to me about Mr. Calverley,' said Mrs. Calverley, and I thought it better, Martin, that you should be present.'
Martin Gurwood bowed, and looked inquiringly at the doctor.
'It is, I regret to say, a very painful communication,' said Doctor Haughton, in answer to this mute appeal. Mr. Calverley was found this afternoon in a very critical state in a--in a railway carriage on
the--on the Great Northern line,' said the doctor, with some little hesitation, feeling himself grow hot all over.
Mr. Broadbent, feeling the actual responsibility thus lifted from his shoulders, preserved a perfectly unruffled demeanour, and nodded his head in solemn corroboration.
'May I ask how you came to hear of this, Doctor Haughton?' said Martin.
'It so happened,' said the doctor, that I had been called in consultation to a case at--a short distance from town'--it would never do to name the exact place while this woman is present, he thought to himself--'and we were returning in the train when the discovery was made, and we at once offered our services, little thinking that the unfortunate sufferer would prove to be an acquaintance of mine.'