The latter had been going through the usual formula with Mrs. Greatorex, feeling her pulse, asking about her appetite, etc., and then had drifted into a light gossip. This pleased his patient, and gave him leisure to gaze on the lovely figure in the window. He hardly cared that she did not speak to him.
After a time he rose, and bid Mrs. Greatorex good-bye. Then he turned deliberately to the girl.
"If you can spare me one moment, Miss Nesbitt, there is just a word or two I would say to you about our patient here," with a smile and bow towards Mrs. Greatorex. "She has been making a little too free, I am afraid, and if you will let me write a prescription in the next room—"
"Certainly," said Agatha, courteously but coldly. She let her flowers fall, and led the way to the little anteroom beyond, hidden by a falling curtain, where a tiny writing-room had been made up.
She stood silent, whilst he told her to keep her aunt a little warmer, or something as trivial, and then scribbled a line or two on a sheet of paper for the chemist. The he went. But he had gained his end. He had held her small cool hand in his. She had not been able to refuse it when he held out his.
CHAPTER III
Agatha came back to the drawing-room, and went straight to her flowers. She did not look at her aunt.
"Well," asked the latter inquisitively. She loved discussing her own ailments.
"Well, there is nothing new. He evidently thinks you immensely better. So much better that I wonder he comes here at all."
"It is very kind of him to come," said Mrs. Greatorex calmly.
"It is too kind. And—for nothing."
"My dear Agatha, I'm afraid it cannot be for nothing. I expect he will see little symptoms of—"
"I don't mean that. What"—impatiently—"I want to say is, that he gains nothing by coming here."
"Nothing in a pecuniary sense, certainly," said Mrs. Greatorex; "but he likes good society—"
Agatha made a sudden movement.
"I wonder how you can do it," said she.
"Do what?" asked Mrs. Greatorex, letting the pretty little pale pink silk sock she was knitting lie upon her lap for a moment.
"Accept his services gratuitously?"
Mrs. Greatorex laughed.
"What have you got into your head now?" asked she. "He has attended me for the past year. Last month I sent him a cheque with a little hint to the effect that as I felt so much better I need not trouble him again. He came the next day. I then told him plainly I could afford no more fees out of my slender income. He said—very gracefully, as I thought—that he could never bear to resign a case until a perfect cure had been accomplished—or something to that effect. Well, why should I not allow him to be happy in his own way?"
"And I am a burden to you," said the girl in a low voice.
"My good child, never give yourself over to nonsense!" said Mrs. Greatorex, with a shrug. "You know very well I am delighted to have you."
She took up her little sock again and turned the heel.
The needles clicked on, and Agatha thought. Was her aunt delighted to have her? Sometimes things pointed that way. But certainly she was a burden to her, as Mrs. Greatorex's income was not only a small one, but she herself was a of a decidedly miserly disposition. The girl had certainly a miserable twenty pounds a year of her own, but that was too little. She made it suffice for her dress, but it sufficed very badly. It was all, however, her father, Colonel Nesbitt, had been able to leave her. Sometimes the girl felt that she loved her, worldly as she was. When she was sixteen, the colonel died. At sixteen she had found herself an orphan, without a friend, and almost penniless, and but that Mrs. Greatorex had then come forward, the poor child would hardly have known what to do or where to go. Fortune favours the brave, they say; sometimes, however, it favours the beautiful.
Agatha Nesbitt was beautiful, and suddenly fortune came to her in the shape of Mrs. Greatorex. It was not a great fortune, truly, but it lifted the girl for the moment out of her Slough of Despond.
But now another terror threatened her. This detestable Dr. Darkham, whose visits to her aunt for the past few months had been so regular—whose visits, now that her aunt had declared herself off his hands, were still so regular—troubled here more than she cared to think.
What there was in his manner to distress her she hardly knew— hardly understood; but she had learned to regard his coming with fear and loathing—to dread those tête-à-têtes, when, in the little ante-room, he wrote out his prescriptions and gave her his instructions.
Not that a word had ever been spoken that all the world might not hear—not a look; and, after all, what was there in the lengthened regard of his dark, unfathomable eyes to alarm her? She could not tell. Not—not love, certainly. He—a married man!
She had remonstrated with her aunt very often. To accept his visits without payment! Mrs. Greatorex, whose pride in her birth was excessive, but who would have gone any lengths to save her pocket, had pooh-poohed the girl's expostulations, and had continued to accept Dr. Darkham's visits without protest.
… . …
Agatha roused herself from her thoughts.
"I know how good you have been to me always," said she with warmth. "You are my one friend. It is because I love you that I can't bear you to have this Dr. Darkham coming here like this. He—"
"My dear, he comes only because he likes to get away from the atmosphere of his sordid home. That pays him. He likes nice people, you know. Why do you dislike the poor man so much?"
"Dislike him?"
"Yes, you do. Like all girls, you are full of nonsensical fads, and"—slowly—"it is my opinion that you think he is in love with you."
"I can't congratulate you, then, on the girls you have known!" said Agatha coldly.
"No?" Mrs. Greatorex laughed the little irritating laugh that belonged to her. "A poor compliment to yourself! Still, I have been studying you a little of late, and I feel sure I am right. Get this latest fad of all out of your head, my dear girl, and as soon as possible."
"You should remember he has a wife," said Agatha coldly.
"Why, so I should." Again that irritating little cackle grated on the girl's ears. "But really, it is very hard to remember. He himself forgets it so persistently. Poor man! who can blame him? Bad as he is, and, of course, we know he rose from the rankest of the ranks, still she— What a woman! A perfect annoyance to the neighbourhood."
"I can't see how she annoys anybody. One never sees her."
"You'll see her to-morrow night at the Firs-Robinsons', anyway. Mrs. Poynter told me this morning that she was going."
"What?" said Agatha. She paused. She even forgot the argument in question in the thought of seeing Mrs. Darkham at the dance to-morrow night. How strange! "Are you sure she is going?"
"Quite sure."
"As a rule, she refuses all invitations."
"There's where she shows her one grain of sense."
"There's where Dr. Darkham shows his tyranny," said Agatha "I believe he doesn't allow her to go anywhere."
Mrs. Greatorex shrugged her thin, ladylike shoulders.
"I suppose you know by this time that 'people are mostly fools.' And even if such light talk be true, and Mrs. Darkham