“Who is this gentleman?” said Mrs. Macartney at last breathlessly, with gratitude, and yet with a certain repugnance to the physician on account of his ugly looks.
Vivienne performed the necessary introduction, and Mrs. Macartney ejaculated, “Ah, your doctor. Perhaps,” jocularly, “I may offer myself to him as a patient.” Then as Dr. Camperdown took Vivienne’s wrist in his hand she bent over him with an interested air and said, “It’s me flesh, doctor. I don’t know what to do about it. The heavens seem to rain it down upon me—flake upon flake, layer upon layer. I’ve been rubbed and tubbed, and grilled and stewed, and done Banting, and taken Anti-fats, and yet it goes on increasing. Every morning there’s more of it, and every evening it grows upon me. I have to swing and tumble and surge about me bed to get impetus enough to roll out; it’s awful, doctor!”
Vivienne listened to her in some surprise, for up to this she had not imagined that Mrs. Macartney felt the slightest uneasiness in regard to her encumbrance of flesh. But there was real anxiety in her tones now, and Vivienne listened with interest for the doctor’s reply.
“What do you eat?” he said abruptly, and with a swift glance at her smooth, fair expanse of cheek and chin.
“Three fairish meals a day,” she said, “and a supper at night.”
“How much do you walk?”
“Sure, I never walk at all if I can get a carriage.”
He laughed shortly, and said nothing.
“What do you think about it, doctor—is it a dangerous case?” said Mrs. Macartney, twisting her head so that she could look at his face as he bent over his work. Vivienne saw that she was immensely impressed by his oracular manner of delivering himself.
“Do you want me to prescribe for you?” he asked, straightening himself with a suddenness that made his prospective patient start nervously.
“Ah, yes, doctor, please,” she said.
“Begin then by dropping the supper, avoid fats, sweets, anything starchy. Walk till you are ready to drop; heart’s all right is it?”
“Ah, yes,” pathetically, and with a flicker of her customary waggishness, “my heart’s always been my strong point, doctor.”
“Report to me at my office,” he went on; “come in a week.”
She shuffled to her feet, her face considerably brighter. “You’ve laid me under an obligation, doctor. If you’ll make me a shadow smaller, I’ll pray for the peace of your soul. And now I must go, me dear,” she said, looking at Vivienne, “or I’ll be missed from the drawing room. I crept away you know.”
Vivienne smiled. Mrs. Colonibel had probably watched her climbing the staircase.
“I must go too,” said Dr. Camperdown, rising as Mrs. Macartney left the room. “You’ll be all right in a day or two, Miss Delavigne. Mind, we’re to be friends.”
Vivienne looked up gratefully into his sharp gray eyes. “You are very good to come and see me.”
“Armour asked me to,” he said shortly.
“Judy told him that I was ill,” said Vivienne. “I scolded her a little, because I did not think I really needed a doctor.”
“You are a proud little thing,” he remarked abruptly.
Vivienne’s black eyes sought his face in some surprise.
“You can’t get on in this world without help,” he continued. “Be kind to other people and let others be kind to you. How do you and Mrs. Colonibel agree?”
“Passably.”
“Don’t give in to her too much,” he said. “A snub does some people more good than a sermon. Good-night,” and he disappeared abruptly.
CHAPTER XII
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
Vivienne and Judy were having afternoon tea in their room, when the lame girl, who was amusing herself by twirling round and round on the piano stool while she ate her bread and butter, burst into a cackling laugh. “Oh, Vivienne, mamma said such a hateful thing about you—so hateful that I must tell you.”
Vivienne laid her head on her chair back and calmly looked at her.
“She said,” went on Judy with a chuckle, “she said, ‘Throw a handkerchief over her head and you will see the peasant.’”
Vivienne’s eyes glittered as they went back to the fire, and Judy continued, “It was such a detestable thing to say, because she knows that you are more like a princess than a peasant. Fancy comparing you to one of the Frenchwomen that one sees down in the market.”
Vivienne made no reply to her, and Judy went on talking and grumbling to herself until she heard footsteps in the hall outside.
“Who is that coming up here?” she said, peering through the half-open door. “As I am a miserable gossip, it’s Stargarde at last, the mysterious Stargarde, about whom your serene highness is so curious.”
Vivienne rose and gazed straight before her in polite fascination. Mr. Armour stood in the doorway, and behind him was a magnificently developed woman who might be any age between twenty-five and thirty. She held her cap in her hand, and the little curls in her masses of golden hair shone round about her head like an aureole. A mantle muffled the upper part of her figure, but Vivienne caught a glimpse of a neck like marble and exquisitely molded hands.
The girl as she stood criticising her visitor did not know that there was anything wistful in her attitude, she had not the remotest idea of bidding for sympathy; therefore it was with the utmost surprise that she saw Stargarde’s arms outstretched, and the mantle spreading out like a cloud and descending upon her.
“Poor little girl—shut up in the house this lovely weather,” and other compassionate sentences she heard as she went into the cloud and was enveloped by it.
When she emerged, shaking her head and putting up her hands to her coils of black hair to feel that they were not disarranged, Stargarde was smiling at her.
“Did I startle you? Forgive me, I was too demonstrative; but do you know, I fell in love with you before I saw you?”
“Did you?” responded Vivienne, then turning to Mr. Armour, who was loitering about the door as if uncertain whether to come in or not, she invited him to sit down.
“Is your cold any better?” he asked stiffly as he came in.
“Yes, thank you,” she replied. “Dr. Camperdown is driving it away.”
“Stanton,” exclaimed Vivienne’s beautiful visitor, flashing a smile at him, “why don’t you introduce me?”
“I thought it scarcely necessary,” he said, his glance brightening as he turned from Vivienne to her, “after the warmth of your greeting. Yet, if you wish it—this, Miss Delavigne, is our friend Miss Stargarde Turner–”
“Of Rockland Street,” she added gravely.
Vivienne tried to hide her astonishment. This woman looked like an aristocrat. Could it be that she lived in one of the worst streets of the city?
Stargarde smiled as if reading her thoughts. “It isn’t so bad as you think,” she said consolingly. “Wait till you see it.” Then she turned to reply to a sharply interjected question by Judy.
While her attention was distracted from her, Vivienne’s glance wandered in quiet appreciation over the classic profile and statuesque figure of her guest as she sat slightly bent forward with hands clasped over her knees, her loose draperies encircling her and making her look like one of the Greek statues, rows and rows of which the girl had seen in foreign