“I stayed away for a fortnight but when I went back one evening I was horrified to see how ill Mrs. Carlyle looked stretched out on the sofa, and as pale as death. ‘You’re worse?’ I asked.
‘Much worse and weaker!’ she replied.
‘You naughty obstinate creature!’ I cried.
‘I’m your friend and your doctor and anything but a fool: I’m sure I can cure you in double-quick time and you prefer to suffer. It’s stupid of you and worse—Come up now at once and think of me only as your doctor’, and I half lifted, half helped her to the door: I supported her up the stairs and at the door of her room, she said:
‘Give me ten minutes, Doctor, and I’ll be ready. I promise you I won’t lock the door again.’
“With that assurance I waited and in ten minutes knocked and went in.
“Mrs. Carlyle was lying on the bed with a woolly-white shawl round her head and face. I thought it absurd affectation in an old married woman, so I resolved on drastic measures: I turned the light full on, then I put my hand under her dress and with one toss threw it right over her head. I pulled her legs apart, dragged her to the edge of the bed and began inserting the speculum in her vulva: I met an obstacle: I looked—and immediately sprang up: ‘Why, you’re a virgo intacta’ (an untouched virgin!) I exclaimed.
She pulled the shawl from her head and said: ‘What did you expect?’
‘Anything but that’, I cried, ‘in a woman married these five and twenty years!’
“I soon found the cause of her trouble and cured it or rather did away with it: that night she rested well and was her old gay, mutinous self when I called next day.