Olive was at her dressing-table at Thornton Chase, looking searchingly into a mirror.
That afternoon she had been dragged unwillingly to the consulting-room of a Cavendish Square physician by her father, who had insisted on having "a tonic or something" prescribed for her. The physician was one of those men who achieve a fashionable practice by an outrageous bluntness—a calculatedly outrageous bluntness. He had found that women like to be bullied by their doctors.
"You're drugging yourself to a lunatic asylum," he had told her after a very brief examination.
"Drugs? I, doctor?" she had replied with a little surprised raising of her eyebrows.
"Don't prevaricate! Don't try to deceive me. You look a perfect wreck. All the signs of it. Come, which is it—morphia, hashish or what?"
"You're mistaken, doctor. I'm run down, that's all. I want a tonic."
"And I'm a busy man." He rose brusquely and strode to the door to open it for her. "I must wish you good afternoon!"
Olive caved in. "Well, perhaps now and again, when I feel absolutely in need of it, I do take a little stimulant," she conceded.
The physician cross-examined her ruthlessly. Finally he prescribed an absolute cessation of drug-taking, and gave her a special dietary and mixture of his own which would help to create a distaste for the morphia.
"Remember," he warned her as they parted, "you're looking an absolute wreck. Everyone can see it. Three months more of the same pace would make you a hag."