That evening, about ten o’clock, Sir Ivor strolled up to me in the smoking-room with affected unconcern.  He laid his hand on my arm and drew me aside mysteriously.  The ship’s doctor was there, playing a quiet game of poker with a few of the passengers.  “I beg your pardon, Dr. Cumberledge,” he began, in an undertone, “could you come outside with me a minute?  Lady Meadowcroft has sent me up to you with a message.”

I followed him on to the open deck.  “It is quite impossible, my dear sir,” I said, shaking my head austerely, for I divined his errand.  “I can’t go and see Lady Meadowcroft.  Medical etiquette, you know; the constant and salutary rule of the profession!”

“Why not?” he asked, astonished.

“The ship carries a surgeon,” I replied, in my most precise tone.  “He is a duly qualified gentleman, very able in his profession, and he ought to inspire your wife with confidence.  I regard this vessel as Dr. Boyell’s practice, and all on board it as virtually his patients.”

Sir Ivor’s face fell.  “But Lady Meadowcroft is not at all well,” he answered, looking piteous; “and—­she can’t endure the ship’s doctor.  Such a common man, you know!  His loud voice disturbs her.  You must have noticed that my wife is a lady of exceptionally delicate nervous organisation.”  He hesitated, beamed on me, and played his trump card.  “She dislikes being attended by owt but a gentleman.”

“If a gentleman is also a medical man,” I answered, “his sense of duty towards his brother practitioners would, of course, prevent him from interfering in their proper sphere, or putting upon them the unmerited slight of letting them see him preferred before them.”

“Then you positively refuse?” he asked, wistfully, drawing back.  I could see he stood in a certain dread of that imperious little woman.

I conceded a point.  “I will go down in twenty minutes,” I admitted, looking grave,—­“not just now, lest I annoy my colleague,—­and I will glance at Lady Meadowcroft in an unprofessional way.  If I think her case demands treatment, I will tell Dr. Boyell.”  And I returned to the smoking-room and took up a novel.

Twenty minutes later I knocked at the door of the lady’s private cabin, with my best bedside manner in full play.  As I suspected, she was nervous—­nothing more—­my mere smile reassured her.  I observed that she held her thumb fast, doubled under in her fist, all the time I was questioning her, as Hilda had said; and I also noticed that the fingers closed about it convulsively at first, but gradually relaxed as my voice restored confidence.  She thanked me profusely, and was really grateful.

On deck next day she was very communicative.  They were going to make the regular tour first, she said, but were to go on to the Tibetan frontier at the end, where Sir Ivor had a contract to construct a railway, in a very wild region.  Tigers?  Natives?  Oh, she didn’t mind either of them; but she was told that that district—­what did they call it? the Terai, or something—­was terribly unwholesome.  Fever was what-you-may-call-it there—­yes, “endemic”—­that was the word; “oh, thank you, Dr. Cumberledge.”  She hated the very name of fever.  “Now you, Miss Wade, I suppose,” with an awestruck smile, “are not in the least afraid of it?”