The door-steps were kept clean, milk was taken in twice a day, and local tradesmen’s carts left things in the ordinary manner.  A doctor occasionally called to see someone, and the only person who had inquired about the patient (she was a friendly creature, who met Mrs. Cupp at the grocer’s, and exchanged a few neighbourly words) was told that ladies who lived in furnished apartments, and had nothing to do, seemed to find an interest in seeing a doctor about things working-women had no time to bother about.  Mrs. Cupp’s view seemed to be that doctor’s visits and medicine bottles furnished entertainment.  Mrs. Jameson had “as good a colour and as good an appetite as you or me,” but she was one who “thought she caught cold easy,” and she was “afraid of fresh air.”

Dr. Warren’s interest in the Extraordinary Case increased at each visit he made.  He did not see the ruby ring again.  When he had left the house after his first call, Mrs. Cupp had called Lady Walderhurst’s attention to the fact that the ring was on her hand, and could not be considered compatible with even a first floor front in Mortimer Street.  Emily had been frightened and had removed it.

“But the thing that upsets me when I hand him in,” Jane said to her mother anxiously in private, “is the way she can’t help looking.  You know what I mean, mother,—­her nice, free, good look.  And we never could talk to her about it.  We should have to let her know that it’s more than likely he thinks she’s just what she isn’t.  It makes me mad to think of it.  But as it had to be, if she only looked a little awkward, or not such a lady, or a bit uppish and fretful, she would seem so much more real.  And then there’s another thing.  You know she always did carry her head well, even when she was nothing but poor Miss Fox-Seton tramping about shopping with muddy feet.  And now, having been a marchioness till she’s got used to it, and knowing that she is one, gives her an innocent, stately look sometimes.  It’s a thing she doesn’t know of herself, but I do declare that sometimes as she’s sat there talking just as sweet as could be, I’ve felt as if I ought to say, ’Oh! if you please, my lady, if you could look not quite so much as if you’d got on a tiara.’”

“Ah!” and Mrs. Cupp shook her head, “but that’s what her Maker did for her.  She was born just what she looks, and she looks just what she was born,—­a respectable female.”

Whereby Dr. Warren continued to feel himself baffled.

“She only goes out for exercise after dark, Mary,” he said.  “Also in the course of conversation I have discovered that she believes every word of the Bible literally, and would be alarmed if one could not accept the Athanasian Creed.  She is rather wounded and puzzled by the curses it contains, but she feels sure that it would be wrong to question anything in the Church Service.  Her extraordinariness is wholly her incompatibleness.”