“She has been an invalid for some time,” replied Grace.  The laugh, which had its edge of patronage and conceit, stung her into self-possession again, and she briefly gave the points of Mrs. Maynard’s case, with the recent accident and the symptoms developed during the night.  He listened attentively, nodding his head at times, and now and then glancing sharply at her, as one might at a surprisingly intelligent child.

“I must see her,” he said decidedly, when she came to an end.  “I will see her as soon as possible.  I will come over to Jocelyn’s this afternoon,—­as soon as I can get my dinner, in fact.”

There was such a tone of dismissal in his words that she rose, and he promptly followed her example.  She stood hesitating a moment.  Then, “I don’t know whether you understood that I wish merely to consult with you,” she said; “that I don’t wish to relinquish the case to you”—­

“Relinquish the case—­consult”—­Dr. Mulbridge stared at her.  “No, I don’t understand.  What do you mean by not relinquishing the case?  If there is some one else in attendance”

“I am in attendance,” said the girl firmly.  “I am Mrs. Maynard’s physician.”

“You?  Physician”

“If you have looked at my card”—­she began with indignant severity.

He gave a sort of roar of amusement and apology, and then he stared at her again with much of the interest of a naturalist in an extraordinary specimen.

“I beg your pardon,” he exclaimed.  “I did n’t look at it”; but he now did so, where he held it crumpled in the palm of his left hand.  “My mother said it was a young lady, and I did n’t look.  Will you will you sit down, Dr. Breen?” He bustled in getting her several chairs.  “I live off here in a corner, and I have never happened to meet any ladies of our profession before.  Excuse me, if I spoke under a,—­mistaken impression.  I—­I—­I should not have—­ah—­taken you for a physician.  You”—­He checked himself, as if he might have been going to say that she was too young and too pretty.  “Of course, I shall have pleasure in consulting with you in regard to your friend’s case, though I’ve no doubt you are doing all that can be done.”  With a great show of deference, he still betrayed something of the air of one who humors a joke; and she felt this, but felt that she could not openly resent it.

“Thank you,” she returned with dignity, indicating with a gesture of her hand that she would not sit down again.  “I am sorry to ask you to come so far.”

“Oh, not at all.  I shall be driving over in that direction at any rate.  I’ve a patient near there.”  He smiled upon her with frank curiosity, and seemed willing to detain her, but at a loss how to do so.  “If I had n’t been stupid from my nap I should have inferred a scientific training from your statement of your friend’s case.”  She still believed that he was laughing at her, and that this was a mock but she was still helpless to resent it, except by an assumption of