FARRANT.  Was he told of the whole business?

WEDGECROFT.  No ...  O’Connell kept things up before him.  Well ... the woman was dying.

HORSHAM.  Couldn’t you have kept the true state of the case from Sir Fielding?

WEDGECROFT.  And been suspected of the malpractice myself if he’d found it out? ... which he would have done ... he’s no fool.  Well ...  I thought of trying that....

FARRANT.  My dear Wedgecroft ... how grossly quixotic!  You have a duty to yourself.

HORSHAM. [Rescuing the conversation from unpleasantness.] I’m afraid I feel that our position to-night is most irregular, Wedgecroft.

WEDGECROFT.  Still if you can make O’Connell see reason.  And if you all can’t.... [He frowns at the alternative.]

CANTELUPE.  Didn’t you say she came to you first of all?

WEDGECROFT.  I met her one morning at Trebell’s.

FARRANT.  Actually at Trebell’s!

WEDGECROFT.  The day he came back from abroad.

FARRANT.  Oh!  No one seems to have noticed them together much at any time.  My wife ...  No matter!

WEDGECROFT.  She tackled me as a doctor with one part of her trouble ... added she’d been with O’Connell in Ireland, which of course it turns out wasn’t true ... asked me to help her.  I had to say I couldn’t.

HORSHAM. [Echoing rather than querying.] You couldn’t.

FARRANT. [Shocked.] My dear Horsham!

WEDGECROFT.  Well, if she’d told me the truth!...  No, anyhow I couldn’t.  I’m sure there was no excuse.  One can’t run these risks.

FARRANT.  Quite right, quite right.

WEDGECROFT.  There are men who do on one pretext or another.

FARRANT. [Not too shocked to be curious.] Are there really?

WEDGECROFT.  Oh yes, men well known ... in other directions.  I could give you four addresses ... but of course I wasn’t going to give her one.  Though there again ... if she’d told me the whole truth!...  My God, women are such fools!  And they prefer quackery ... look at the decent doctors they simply turn into charlatans.  Though, there again, that all comes of letting a trade work mysteriously under the thumb of a benighted oligarchy ... which is beside the question.  But one day I’ll make you sit up on the subject of the Medical Council, Horsham.

      HORSHAM assumes an impenetrable air of statesmanship.

HORSHAM.  I know.  Very interesting ... very important ... very difficult to alter the status quo.

WEDGECROFT.  Then the poor little liar said she’d go off to an appointment with her dressmaker; and I heard nothing more till she sent for me a week later, and I found her almost too ill to speak.  Even then she didn’t tell me the truth!  So, when O’Connell arrived, of course I spoke to him quite openly and all he told me in reply was that it wouldn’t have been his child.