“Well for him he did! And you are quite sure, Ivy! I’m not going through all this again. ‘I will marry you and no one else.’ Say it.”
“I will marry you and no one else... Johnnie, it’ll break his heart! I can’t say it!”
“But you have. Do you take it back?”
There was a long silence. Then Eric heard a low but distinct “No.”
The passage had not been noticeably hot before, but the still air glared like the burning blast from an open furnace-door. Eric found his face streaming with sweat; and the wooden chair-back was slippery in his grasp. There seemed to be a murmur of confused voices everywhere—in the passage on either side of him, in the hall—preeminently in the hall, where one murmur dominated the other murmurs, and one voice dominated all.
It was Gaisford’s voice, authoritative and ill-tempered, reprimanding some one.
“Yes, my girl, but I said my patient was not to be left. You go off duty when the other nurse comes on—and not a moment before. You’ve left the patient entirely unattended? ‘Seemed all right’ be hanged! Your duty is to do precisely what I tell you. When did you go out? Half an hour! I don’t believe it! I don’t mind telling you that you haven’t heard the last of this.”
Eric came into the hall, as the nurse hurried away with a scarlet face and the doctor pulled off his gloves and threw them on to the table, still muttering angrily to himself.
“Hullo!,” he exclaimed. “I thought I’d sent you away.”
“I came up this evening to consult you,” Eric answered. His voice seemed small and remote, but the doctor found nothing amiss with it. “I was feeling rather seedy and I thought I’d ask you to overhaul me. If you’re not very busy, we might get it over to-night, when you’ve finished with Ivy. I—I’ve only just come in,” he added hastily. “I went to your place first. I rather fancy that in the nurse’s absence some one must have let Gaymer in. I think he’s with Ivy now, though I haven’t been in to see yet.”