“Oh,” I said. “More than once I, too, have been compelled to listen to the domestic secrets of certain households. It really is astonishing what a woman will tell her doctor, even though he may be young.”
The old man laughed again.
“Ah!” he sighed. “You don’t know women as I know them, Boyd. You’ve got your experience to gain. Then you’ll hold them in abhorrence—just as I do. They call me a woman-hater,” he grunted. “Perhaps I am—for I’ve had cause to hold the feminine mind and the feminine passion equally in contempt.”
“Well,” I laughed, “there’s not a man in London who is more qualified to speak from personal experience than yourself. So I anticipate a pretty rough time when I’ve had years of it, as you have.”
“And yet you want to marry!” he snapped, looking me straight in the face. “Of course, you love Ethelwynn Mivart. Every man at your age loves. It is a malady that occurs in the ’teens and declines in the thirties. I should have thought that your affection of the heart had been about cured. It is surely time it was.”
“It is true that I love Ethelwynn,” I declared, rather annoyed, “and I intend to marry her.”
“If you do, then you’ll spoil all your chances of success. The class of women who are my patients would much rather consult a confirmed bachelor than a man who has a jealous wife hanging to his coat-tails. The doctor’s wife must always be a long-suffering person.”
I smiled; and then our conversation turned upon his proposed retirement, which was to take place in six months’ time.
I returned to London by the last train, and on entering my room found a telegram from Ambler making an appointment to call on the following evening. The message was dated from Eastbourne, and was the first I had received from him for some days.
Next morning I sat in Sir Bernard’s consulting-room as usual, receiving patients, and the afternoon I spent on the usual hospital round. About six o’clock Ambler arrived, drank a brandy and soda with a reflective air, and then suggested that we might dine together at the Cavour—a favourite haunt of his.