He smiled as he ended, and thrust out his hand.

“I’ll be going now.  I left my bicycle in the village and hope to find it still there.  Now remember, Lady Evesham, my visit to-morrow is to be of a strictly unprofessional character.  You didn’t send for me, so I shall assume the privilege of coming as a friend.  Is that understood?”

He spoke with smiling assurance, and seeing that he meant to gain his point she yielded it.

Not till he was gone did she come to ponder the errand that had brought him thither.

She went back to Jeanie, and found her with aching eyes fixed resolutely on her book.  Yes, she was a little tired, but she would rather go on, thank you.  Oh no, she did not mind staying in bed to-morrow to please Avery, and she was sure she would like Avery’s doctor though she didn’t expect he would manage to stop the cough.  She would have to do her task though all the same; dear Avery mustn’t mind.  You see, she had promised.  But she would certainly stay in bed if Avery wished.

And then came the tired sigh, and then that racking, cruel cough that seemed to rend her whole frame.  No, she would not finish for another hour yet.  Really she must go on.

The brown head dropped on to the little bony hands, and Jeanie was immersed once more in her task.

More than once in the night Avery awoke to hear that tearing, breathless cough in the room next to hers.  It was no new thing, but in view of the coming ordeal it filled her with misgiving.

When she rose herself in the morning she felt weighed down with anxious foreboding.

Yet, when Maxwell Wyndham arrived in his sauntering, informal fashion at about noon, she was able to meet him with courage.  There was something electric about his personality that seemed almost unconsciously to impart strength to the downhearted.  He had drawn her back from the very Door of Death, and her confidence in him was absolute.

They lunched alone together, and talked of many things.  More than once, wholly incidentally, he mentioned her husband.  She gathered that he did not know of their bitter estrangement.  He talked of the polo-craze, with which it seemed Piers was badly bitten, and commented on his splendid horsemanship.

“Yes, he is a wonderful athlete,” Avery said.

She wondered if he deemed her unresponsive, but decided that he set her coldness down to anxiety; for he finished his luncheon without lingering and declared himself ready for the business in hand.

He became in fact strictly business-like from that moment, and throughout the examination that followed she had not the faintest notion as to what was passing in his mind.  To Jeanie he was curtly kind, but to herself he was as utterly uncommunicative as if he had been a total stranger.

The examination was a protracted one, and more painful than Avery had thought possible.  It taxed poor Jeanie’s powers of endurance to the uttermost, and long before it was finished she was weeping from sheer exhaustion.  He was absolutely patient with her, but he insisted upon carrying the matter through, remaining when it was at last over until she had somewhat recovered from the ordeal.