“Her rights!” The old man fairly snorted the words.

“Now, now, Dr. Gibson!” interposed the other.  “You asked me——­”

“I know!  I know!  But as the older of the physicians in charge of this case——­”

Dr. Perrin managed to frown him down, and went on trying to placate me.  But through the argument I could hear the old man muttering in his collar a kind of double bass pizzicato:  “Suffragettes!  Fanatics!  Hysteria!  Woman’s Rights!”

27.  The breeze was feeble, and the sun was blazing hot, but nevertheless I made myself listen patiently for a while.  They had said it all to me, over and over again; but it seemed that Dr. Perrin could not be satisfied until it had been said in Douglas van Tuiver’s presence.

“Dr. Perrin,” I exclaimed, “even supposing we make the attempt to deceive her, we have not one plausible statement to make——­”

“You are mistaken, Mrs. Abbott,” said he.  “We have the perfectly well-known fact that this disease is often contracted in ways which involve no moral blame.  And in this case I believe I am in position to state how the accident happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know whether you heard that just before Mrs. van Tuiver’s confinement, I was called away to one of the other keys to attend a negro-woman.  And since this calamity has befallen us, I have realized that I was possibly not as careful in sterilizing my instruments as I might have been.  It is of course a dreadful thing for any physician to have to believe——­”

He stopped, and there was a long silence.  I gazed from one to another of the men.  Two of them met my gaze; one did not.  “He is going to let you say that?” I whispered, at last.

“Honour and fairness compel me to say it, Mrs. Abbott.  I believe——­”

But I interrupted him.  “Listen to me, Dr. Perrin.  You are a chivalrous gentleman, and you think you are helping a man in desperate need.  But I say that anyone who would permit you to tell such a tale is a contemptible coward!”

“Madam,” cried Dr. Gibson, furiously, “there is a limit even to a woman’s rights!”

A silence followed.  At last I resumed, in a low voice, “You gentlemen have your code:  you protect the husband—­you protect him at all hazards.  I could understand this, if he were innocent of the offence in question; I could understand it if there were any possibility of his being innocent.  But how can you protect him, when you know that he is guilty?”

“There can be no question of such knowledge!” cried the old doctor.

“I have no idea,” I said, “how much he has admitted to you; but let me remind you of one circumstance, which is known to Dr. Perrin—­that I came to this place with the definite information that symptoms of the disease were to be anticipated.  Dr. Perrin knows that I told that to Dr. Overton in New York.  Has he informed you of it?”