“A telegraphic message was delivered to me this morning——�
“At Mirkwood Park, near Bradford,� the Doctor unconsciously quoted aloud from the card he still held between his plump white thumb and forefinger.
“It purported to come from the proprietor of this hotel. It said that Mr.—that my husband was dangerously ill—that my presence was urgently needed.� Mrs. Rosval’s lips—delicately chiseled lips, but totally devoid of color—shaped themselves into something that might have been a smile. And as the maid, who nursed a dressing-bag in the background, at this juncture emitted a sniff, the mistress glanced again over her shoulder, and said, with a slight accent of weariness or contempt, or both together: “Really, Matilda, there is no need for that!�
The irrefragable Doctor had gauged the shallow depths of the woman’s nature by this time. She was merely a polished and singularly adamantine specimen of the unfeeling wife. He allowed a tinge of rebuke to color the tone of his explanation.
“The proprietor acted upon my—ah—advice. The condition of my patient may be truthfully described as—er—dangerous. The illness is—in fact—typhoid fever. And your husband has it in a bad form. There are complications which——�
The Doctor stopped short. For Mrs. Rosval was not listening. She was crumpling a piece of pinkish paper into a ball—probably the telegram to which she had alluded—and pondering. Then she leveled those strangely brilliant, narrow-lidded eyes of hers point-blank at the Doctor, and asked: “Am I to understand that Mr. Rosval has nothing to do with—my being sent for?�
The Doctor conveyed the information that Mr. Rosval had not prompted the step. Mr. Rosval had been—since the third day following on the—ah—development of the illness—ringing the changes between delirium and—ah—coma. For—as the Doctor had already said—there were complications——
Mrs. Rosval neatly stopped the ball, for the second time.
“How did you know, if he did not tell you, that there was a Mrs. Rosval? How did you get at my address?�
The Doctor, swelling with the indignity of being supposed to have got at anybody’s address, explained that the proprietor of the hotel, having some faint inkling that Mr. Rosval belonged to the class of landed gentleman, had looked up the name in Burke.