And yet, for her mind traveled back to her earlier talk by the tennis court, Beaumaroy had a conscience, had feelings.  He was fond of old Mr. Saffron; he felt a responsibility for him, felt it, indeed, keenly.  Or was he, under all that seeming openness, a consummate hypocrite?  Did he value Mr. Saffron only as a milk cow, the doting giver of a large salary?  Was his only desire to humor him, keep him in good health and temper, and use him to his own profit?  A puzzling man, but, at all events, cutting a poor figure beside Alec Naylor, about whom there could circle no clouds of doubt.  Doctor Mary’s learning and gravity did not prevent her from drawing a very heroic and rather romantic figure of Captain Alec—­notwithstanding that she sometimes found him rather hard to talk to.

She felt Cynthia’s arm steal around her waist, and Cynthia said softly, “I did enjoy my afternoon.  Can we go again soon, Mary?”

Mary glanced at her.  Cynthia laughed and blushed.  “Isn’t he splendid?” Cynthia murmured.  “But I don’t like Mr. Beaumaroy, do you?”

“I say yes to the first question, but I’m not quite ready to answer the second,” said Mary with a laugh.

Three days later, on Christmas Eve, one whom Jeanne, who caught sight of him in the hall, described as being all there was possible of ugliness, delivered (with a request for an immediate answer) the following note for Mary Arkroyd: 

Dear Dr. Arkroyd: 

Mr. Saffron is unwell, and I have insisted that he must see a doctor.  So much he has yielded, after a fight!  But nothing will induce him to see Dr. Irechester again.  On this point I tried to reason with him, but in vain.  He is obstinate and resolved.  I am afraid that I am putting you in a difficult and disagreeable position, but it seems to me that I have no alternative but to ask you to call on him professionally.  I hope that Dr. Irechester will not be hurt by a whim which is, no doubt, itself merely a symptom of disordered nerves, for Dr. Irechester has been most attentive and very successful hitherto in dealing with the dear old gentleman.  But my first duty is to Mr. Saffron.  If it will ease matters at all, pray hold yourself at liberty to show this note to Dr. Irechester.  May I beg you to be kind enough to call at your earliest convenience, though it is, alas, a rough evening to ask you to come out?

Yours very faithfully,

Hector Beaumaroy.

“How very awkward!” exclaimed Mary.  She had prided herself on a rigorous abstention from “poaching”; she fancied that men were very ready to accuse women of not “playing the game” and had been resolved to give no color to such an accusation.  “Mr. Saffron has sent for me—­professionally.  He’s ill, it seems,” she said to Cynthia.

“Why shouldn’t he?”

“Because he is a patient of Dr. Irechester, not a patient of mine.”

“But people often change their doctors, don’t they?  He thinks you’re cleverer, I suppose, and I expect you are really.”