Dr. Irechester was a man of considerable attainments and an active, though not very persevering, intellect.  He was widely read both in professional and general literature, but had shrunk from the arduous path of specialization.  And he shrank even more from the drudgery of his calling.  He had private means, inherited in middle life; his wife had a respectable portion; there was, then, nothing in his circumstances to thwart his tastes and tendencies.  He had soon come to see in the late Dr. Evans a means of relief rather than a threat of rivalry; even more easily he slipped into the same way of regarding Mary Arkroyd, helped thereto by a lingering feeling that, after all and in spite of all, when it came to really serious cases, a woman could not, at best, play more than second fiddle.  So, as has been seen, he patronized and encouraged Mary; he told himself that, when she had thoroughly proved her capacity—­within the limits which he ascribed to it—­to take her into partnership would not be a bad arrangement.  True, he could pretty well choose his patients now; but as senior partner he would be able to do it completely.  It was well-nigh inconceivable that, for example, the Naylors—­great friends—­should ever leave him; but he would like to be quite secure of the pick of new patients, some of whom might, through ignorance or whim, call in Mary.  There was old Saffron, for instance.  He was, in Irechester’s private opinion, or, perhaps it should be said in his private suspicions, an interesting case; yet, just for that reason, unreliable, and evidently ready to take offense.  It was because of cases of that kind that he contemplated offering partnership to Mary; he would both be sure of keeping them and able to devote himself to them.

But his wife laughed at Mary, or at that development of the feminist movement which had produced her and so many other more startling phenomena.  The Doctor was fond of his wife, a sprightly, would-be fashionable, still very pretty woman.  But her laughter, and the opinion it represented, were to him the merest crackling of thorns under a pot.

The fine afternoon had come, a few days before Christmas, and he sat, side by side with Mr. Naylor, both warmly wrapped in coats and rugs, watching the lawn tennis at Old Place.  Doctor Mary and Beaumaroy were playing together, the latter accustoming himself to a finger short in gripping his racquet, against Cynthia and Captain Alec.  The Captain could not yet cover the court in his old fashion, but his height and reach made him formidable at the net, and Cynthia was very active.  Ten days of Inkston air had made a vast difference to Cynthia.  And something else was helping.  It required no common loyalty to lost causes and ruined ideals—­it is surely not harsh to indicate Captain Cranster by these terms?—­to resist Alec Naylor.  In fact he had almost taken Cynthia’s breath away at their first meeting; she thought that she had never seen anything quite so magnificent, or—­all round and from all points of view, so romantic; his stature, handsomeness, limp, renown.  Who can be surprised at it?  Moreover, he was modest and simple, and no fool within the bounds of his experience.