"It won't be the first one. And my beauty's of the kind which takes a lot of spoiling."
The answer did not please the young man. He sauntered across the room and dropped into his chair, with a slightly insolent demeanour.
"All the same, don't let me detain you," he said, "if you prefer seeing Lady Calmady at once and getting off."
"You don't detain me," Dr. Knott answered. "I'm afraid that it's just the other way about, and that I must detain you, Captain Ormiston, and that on rather unpleasant business."
Julius March had risen to his feet. "You—you have no fresh cause for anxiety about Lady Calmady?" he said hurriedly.
The doctor glanced up at the tall, spare, black figure and dark, sensitive face with a half-sneering, half-pitying smile.
"Oh no, no!" he replied; "Lady Calmady's going on splendidly. And it is to guard, just as far as we can, against cause for anxiety later, that I want to speak to Captain Ormiston now. We've got to be prepared for certain contingencies. Don't you go, Mr. March. You may as well hear what I've to say. It will interest you particularly, I fancy, after one or two things you have told us to-night!"
"Sit down, Julius, please."—Ormiston would have liked to maintain that same insolence of demeanour, but it gave before an apprehension of serious issues. He looked hard at the doctor, cudgeling his brains as to what the latter's enigmatic speech might mean—divined, put the idea away as inadmissible, returned to it, then said angrily:—"There's nothing wrong with the child, of course?"
Dr. Knott turned his chair sideways to the table and shaded his face with his thick, square hand.
"Well, that depends on what you call wrong," he slowly replied.