“I am late already, if you will excuse me,” Doctor Stillwell interrupted.  “I will be getting on.  You must excuse my uncle, Sir Everard,” he added in a lower tone, drawing him a little towards the door, “if his manners are a little gruff.  He is devoted to Lady Dominey, and I sometimes think that he broods over her case too much.”

Dominey nodded and turned back into the room to find the doctor, his hands in his old-fashioned breeches pockets, eyeing him steadfastly.

“I find it very hard to believe,” he said a little curtly, “that you are really Everard Dominey.”

“I am afraid you will have to accept me as a fact, nevertheless.”

“Your present appearance,” the old man continued, eyeing him appraisingly, “does not in any way bear out the description I had of you some years ago.  I was told that you had become a broken-down drunkard.”

“The world is full of liars,” Dominey said equably.  “You appear to have met with one, at least.”

“You have not even,” the doctor persisted, “the appearance of a man who has been used to excesses of any sort.”

“Good old stock, ours,” his visitor observed carelessly.  “Plenty of two-bottle men behind my generation.”

“You have also gained courage since the days when you fled from England.  You slept at the Hall last night?”

“Where else?  I also, if you want to know, occupied my own bedchamber—­with results,” Dominey added, throwing his head a little back, to display the scar on his throat, “altogether insignificant.”

“That’s just your luck,” the doctor declared.  “You’ve no right to have gone there without seeing me; no right, after all that has passed, to have even approached your wife.”

“You seem rather a martinet as regards my domestic affairs,” Dominey observed.

“That’s because I know your history,” was the blunt reply.

Uninvited Dominey seated himself in an easy-chair.

“You were never my friend, Doctor,” he said.  “Let me suggest that we conduct this conversation on a purely professional basis.”

“I was never your friend,” came the retort, “because I have known you always as a selfish brute; because you were married to the sweetest woman on God’s earth, gave up none of your bad habits, frightened her into insanity by reeling home with another man’s blood on your hands, and then stayed away for over ten years instead of making an effort to repair the mischief you had done.”

“This,” observed Dominey, “is history, dished up in a somewhat partial fashion.  I repeat my suggestion that we confine our conversation to the professional.”

“This is my house,” the other rejoined, “and you came to see me.  I shall say exactly what I like to you, and if you don’t like it you can get out.  If it weren’t for Lady Dominey’s sake, you shouldn’t have passed this threshold.”

“Then for her sake,” Dominey suggested in a softer tone, “can’t you forget how thoroughly you disapprove of me?  I am here now with only one object:  I want you to point out to me any way in which we can work together for the improvement of my wife’s health.”