Fenella did not pursue the subject. She felt all the vulgarity of her old mistress, but she felt also an unaccountable sense of protection in her company. Brazen, alert, competent, grasping, utterly disillusioned, mature; with good looks that seem to have settled down for fifteen years' hard service; smartly dressed, opaque of eye, unrestrained of laugh and anecdote with condescending patrons; living in discreet little houses, in discreet little streets off fashionable thoroughfares, with open-work lace blinds at their windows—Berthe, Clarice, Suzanne, Estelle, as the case may be—latterly even, Elizabeth and Kate: polishing nails, crimping hair, ironing out wrinkles, reducing flesh, kneading and anointing the pampered body; teaching dancing, selling fans and lace; "advising" decoration, dabbling in magic, undertaking "confidential" commissions; with a range of service that touches impropriety at one extreme and heroism at the other, and often with a past of their own behind them in which the finer feelings have perished, but not a good heart, the De Rudders of the world play their part in the parasitical life of the rich bravely enough—play it often, too, with a secret hatred and contempt for the class whose follies they fatten on that would be a revelation to the mere reformer.
The trouble began with an interview that poor Lady Anne was "accorded" early in November. The place, a sober "Adams" parlor, distempered in green, furnished in the old oak of commerce, and hung with Romney engravings in black carved wood frames. Between the two gaunt windows a writing-desk, littered with memorandum blocks, supports a large silver inkstand bearing the legend: "To Jas. Pemmer-Lloyd, Esq., M. R. C. S., from a grateful patient." To right, a low couch covered with a white linen cloth and with some mysterious mechanism or other at its head. At its foot, a glass table on rubber wheels, its two tiers loaded with multiform electro-plated apparatus. Carpet obtrusively thick.
"But are you quite sure?" she was saying.
Her companion, a dark, keen-faced man of few words, seems to consider awhile. Conversation in Harley and Weymouth Streets is expensive: even so, it was felt that Pemmer-Lloyd gave short weight.
"Personally," he answered, "I have no doubt whatever. Of course, if you wish, I can arrange a consultation or meet your own doctor. It was quite irregular you're not bringing him."
"Never ride again! Never—ride—again!" Poor Lady Anne kept repeating the dreadful sentence over and over to herself.
"Doctor!" she said aloud. "I have no doctor. Never been ill in my life. And what's the use of paying more money to a lot of men who'll only dot your i's and cross your t's for you? You're the top of the tree, ain't you?"
Pemmer-Lloyd, who was writing at his desk, did not deny the soft impeachment.
"I've written two names," he said, "on the back of your prescription. The apparatus can be obtained at either. The massage should be done in the evening—at your own house, if possible. You will find it a little exhausting at first. Thank you."