"For your wife's sake you must try, and also because it is necessary that you should show respect to the dead heir of your house."
"Then I am to put a band on my hat and all that sort of thing?"
"Yes."
"It is a trifle, doctor. If you and Margaret wish it, I cannot reasonably refuse. To come back to myself, however, you consider that I am quite doomed?"
"Not quite yet, although your case is a bad one. I believe you can be saved if only you will exert yourself."
"Do wishes go for anything in a case like mine?"
"Assuredly. To hear you express a wish is a capital sign. What do you want to do?"
"I have a strange wish to go down to the Court. I feel as if something or some one, whether angel or demon I do not know, were drawing me there. I have wished to be at the Court for some days. I thought at first of taking Margaret with me."
"Do so. She would be glad to accompany you. She is a wife in a thousand."
"But on second thoughts," continued Awdrey, "if I am obliged to listen to her bitter distress over the death of a child who never, as far as I can recall, existed, I should prefer not having her."