“And you mean to have nothing to say in the matter?”
“Nothing at all,” he said firmly. “I have already told you my views on the subject.”
“Well, then,” the Doctor said hotly, “I regard you as an ass.” And without another word he walked off in great anger.
For the next four or five days Isobel was in a high state of fever; it passed off as the Doctor had predicted it would do, but left her very weak and languid. Another week and she was about again.
“What is Mr. Bathurst going to do?” she asked the Doctor the first day she was up on a couch.
“I don't know what he is going to do, my dear,” he said irritably; “my opinion of Bathurst is that he is a fool.”
“Oh, Doctor, how can you say so!” she exclaimed in astonishment; “why, what has he done?”
“It isn't what he has done, but what he won't do, my dear. Here he is in love with a young woman in every way suitable, and who is ready to say yes whenever he asks her, and he won't ask, and is not going to ask, because of a ridiculous crotchet he has got in his head.”
Isobel flushed and then grew pale.
“What is the crotchet?” she asked, in a low tone, after being silent for some time.