Twelve miles at least, allowing for speed limits through the town, and New Park close at hand; just in fact, round the corner. He made the calculation rapidly, and began to sound the hooter.
"I shall take you in here," he said decisively, "and telephone to Ted. Then when you've had a good rest you can go home."
The gates, set wide open at his signalling, slipped past in the growing dusk, a rabbit or two showed nimble across the smooth surface of the drive.
"It will be best, perhaps," said Aura, with a catch in her breath.
"Of course it will be best," he replied cheerfully, as he drew up in the wide portico.
"The housekeeper, please!" he called, glad for once of the decorous hurry of obedience. "Take Mrs. Cruttenden, if you please, Mrs. Adgers, and let her rest for a little," he said to the dignified lady who appeared as if by magic. Then, only waiting to add in a lower voice, "and look after her; you understand," he was in the car again before it had had time to run down, and was off over a short cut to St. Helena's Hospital, which lay on the hill about three miles off.
Thence he returned in twenty minutes with Sister Ann, leaving Dr. Ramsay to follow more leisurely.
Finally, having sent the car in charge of a chauffeur to bring Ted along, he sat in the library and smoked, feeling half derisive at the irony of fate. If he had indeed been Aura's husband, and the father of this coming child, what more could he have done?
Dr. Ramsay arrived cool and collected and went upstairs. Ted arrived in a terrible state of fuss and also went upstairs. Then the house reverted to its usual staid routine. The gong sounded at dressing-time, and, clad in due decorum, Ned dined alone in the huge red dining-room which looked like a big mouth ready to swallow him up. The footman, overlooked by the butler, handed him the courses gravely, the butler filled his glass with '98 Pomeroy. Ned had not asked for it this time, but it was considered the proper thing with sudden and serious illness in the house. And all the while he was thinking how little life and death would affect him, if all these things could be swept away, and he be indeed nothing more than Carlyle's forked radish with a consciousness.
Then he smoked and read again till ten o'clock, when the footman, overlooked by the butler, brought the whisky and water into the library, and Dr. Ramsay came with it.