"She won't go! Her mother died in a hospital, and Weston thinks she was neglected."
"Absurd! I assure you," said France warmly. "Nobody is neglected in hospitals."
"But one can't persuade her—and if she's forced against her will, it'll give her no chance!" said Delia in distress. "No, it must be here. You say we can get a good man from Brownmouth?"
They discussed the possibilities of an operation at Maumsey.
Insensibly the doctor's tone during the conversation grew more friendly, as it proceeded. A convinced opponent of "feminism" in all its forms, he had thought of Delia hitherto as merely a wrong-headed, foolish girl, and could hardly bring himself to be civil at all to her chaperon, who in his eyes belonged to a criminal society, and was almost certainly at that very moment engaged in criminal practices. But Delia, absorbed in the distresses of someone she cared for, all heart and eager sympathy, her loveliness lending that charm to all she said and looked which plainer women must so frequently do without was a very mollifying and ingratiating spectacle. France began to think her—misled and unbalanced of course—but sound at bottom. He ended by promising to make all arrangements himself, and to go in that very afternoon to see the great man at Brownmouth.
When Delia returned to her maid's room, the morphia which had been administered was beginning to take effect, and Weston, an elderly woman with a patient, pleasing face, lay comparatively at rest, her tremulous look expressing at once the keenness of the suffering past, and the bliss of respite. Delia bent over her, dim-eyed.
"Dear Weston—we've arranged it all—it's going to be done here. You'll be at home—and I shall look after you."
Weston put out a clammy hand and faintly pressed Delia's warm fingers—
"But you were going to London, Miss. I don't want to put you out so."
"I shan't go till you're out of the wood, so go to sleep—and don't worry."