“WHERE is Lord Harry?” Iris asked.

The reply startled her: “Lord Harry leaves me to say to your ladyship, what he has not had resolution enough to say for himself.”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Vimpany.”

The doctor pointed to the fern which had just been the object of Lady Harry’s care.

“You have been helping that sickly plant there to live and thrive,” he said, “and I have felt some curiosity in watching you. There is another sickly plant, which I have undertaken to rear if the thing can be done. My gardening is of the medical kind — I can only carry it on indoors — and whatever else it may be, I tell you plainly, like the outspoken sort of fellow I am, it’s not likely to prove agreeable to a lady. No offence, I hope? Your humble servant is only trying to produce the right sort of impression — and takes leave to doubt his lordship in one particular.”

“In what particular, sir?”

“I’ll put it in the form of a question, ma’am. Has my friend persuaded you to make arrangements for leaving the cottage?”

Iris looked at Lord Harry’s friend without attempting to conceal her opinion of him.

“I call that an impertinent question,” she said. “By what right do you presume to inquire into what my husband and I may, or may not, have said to each other?”

“Will you do me a favour, my lady? Or, if that is asking too much, perhaps you will not object to do justice to yourself. Suppose you try to exercise the virtue of self-control?

“Quite needless, Mr. Vimpany. Pray understand that you are not capable of making me angry.”

“Many thanks, Lady Harry: you encourage me to go on. When I was bold enough to speak of your leaving the cottage, my motive was to prevent you from being needlessly alarmed.”

Did this mean that he was about to take her into his confidence? All her experience of him forbade her to believe it possible. But the doubts and fears occasioned by her interview with her husband had mastered her better sense; and the effort to conceal from the doctor the anxiety under which she suffered was steadily weakening the influence of her self-respect. “Why should I be alarmed?” she asked, in the vain hope of encouraging him to tell the truth.

The doctor arrived at a hasty conclusion, on his side. Believing that he had shaken her resolution, he no longer troubled himself to assume the forms of politeness which he had hitherto, with some difficulty, contrived to observe.

“In this curious little world of ours,” he resumed, “we e............