“I understand—the affair was nipped.”
Lady Selina hated interruptions.
“Don’t nip me, my dear. What happened can be put adequately without using slang. Common sense prevailed. Your dear father, indeed, had a finger in the pie. . . .”
“Pressure!” exclaimed the young lady. “I should have thought,” she added, “that Dr. Pawley would not have yielded to pressure.”
“Which shows, my dear, that you don’t know him. At any rate, he did the wise and honourable thing. None of us, high or low, can afford to ignore public opinion. In this case, everything turned out for the best. Dr. Pawley’s straightforward conduct served to establish his position. When the facts became known, the best houses opened their doors to him.”
“But he lost a partner.”
“That loss turned into a substantial gain. I have often thought that celibacy is best for doctors and clergymen. If they marry, they should choose helpmeets. But I can understand, also, that such a man as my dear old friend, having loved truly a young lady of quality—she had very great charm and distinction, I can assure you—would not care to look elsewhere. And here again his fidelity to an ideal has endeared him to all of us.”
Lady Selina sighed. Cicely murmured pensively:
“I wonder what Tiddy would say.”
“I can imagine what your friend would say, Cicely, and I am glad that she is not here to say it. Noblesse oblige happens to be a phrase which the daughter of Sir Nathaniel Tiddle couldn’t be expected to understand.”