“So you’ve come again!  It’s very good of you.  Nigel is awake now.”

She looked towards Doctor Hartley.

“I hope Doctor Isaacson will be able to reassure you,” she said.  “You frightened me this afternoon.  I don’t think you quite realized what it is to a woman to have sprung upon her so abruptly such an alarming view of an invalid’s condition.”

“But I didn’t at all mean—­” began the young doctor in agitation.

“I don’t know what you meant,” she interrupted, “but you alarmed me dreadfully.  Well, are you going to see my husband together?”

“Yes, we must do that,” said Isaacson.

He was slightly surprised by her total lack of all further opposition to the consultation, although he had almost prophesied it to Hartley.  Perhaps he had prophesied to reassure himself, for now he was conscious of a certain rather vague sense of doubt and of uneasiness, such as comes upon a man who, without actually suspecting an ambush, wonders whether, perhaps, he is near one.

“I dare say you would rather I was not present at your consultation?” said Mrs. Armine.

“It isn’t usual for any one to be present except the doctors taking part in it,” said Isaacson.

“The consultation comes after the visit to the patient,” she said; “and of course I’ll leave you alone for that.  I should prefer to leave you alone while you are examining my husband, too, but I’m sorry to say he insists on my being there.”

Isaacson was no longer in doubt about an ambush.  She had prepared one while she had been left alone with the sick man.  Hartley having unexpectedly escaped from the magic circle of her influence, she had devoted herself to making it invulnerable about her husband.

Nevertheless, he meant to break in at whatever cost.

“We don’t want to oppose or irritate the patient, I’m sure,” he said.

He looked towards Doctor Hartley.

“No, no, certainly not!” the young man assented, hastily.

“Very well, then!” said Mrs. Armine.

Her brows went down and her mouth contracted for an instant.  Then she moistened her painted lips with the tip of her tongue and turned towards the door.

“I’ll go first to tell him you are coming,” she said.

She went out into the passage.

XXXIX

Isaacson glanced at Doctor Hartley before he followed her.

“I—­doesn’t she look strange?  Did you ever see such an alteration?” almost whispered the young man.

Isaacson did not answer, but stepped into the passage.

Mrs. Armine was a little way down it, walking on rather quickly.  Suddenly she looked round.  Light shone upon her from above, and showed her tense and worn face, her features oddly sharpened and pointed, wrinkles clustering about the corners of her eyes.  She seemed, under the low roof, unnaturally tall in her flowing grey robe, and this evening in her height there seemed to Isaacson to be something forbidding and almost dreadful.  She held up one hand, as if warning the two men to pause for a moment.  Then she went on, and disappeared through the doorway that faced them beyond the two rows of bedrooms.