"Tell me what you talked about, won’t you?" Mrs. Chard continued. "It’s being kept in the dark in my own house that I hate so much. It isn’t fair--do you think it is? For, after all, though I am not strong I do take an interest in things."
"I didn’t say much. Mr. Chard talked a good deal--principally about you."
"Oh, indeed; and what did he say? Told you all sorts of naughty things, I suppose?"
The spectacle of this elderly woman waxing coquettish on the subject of her husband filled Isla with a curious mixture of pity and amusement.
"No. He was chiefly trying to impress on me the fact that you are very ill and that you require to be kept quiet and not worried in the least."
"Dear Edgar! he is most considerate! He quite spoils me."
"I was very much surprised to hear that you had no doctor in attendance, Mrs. Bodley-Chard. Wouldn’t it be better for you to see some one?"
Mrs. Bodley-Chard uplifted her hands in mute protest.
"Doctors! I’ve spent fortunes on them, and they’ve never done me the smallest good. The last one I had--a man from Mount Street, a very new broom who was going to sweep the West End quite clean--quarrelled with Edgar. What do you think? He actually had the audacity to say that there was nothing whatever the matter with me and that, if I were a poor woman who had to get my living, I should be going about quite well."
Isla privately wished she knew that doctor. She felt sure that she should like him.
"But perhaps, though he need not have put it so harshly, there was a grain of truth in what he said, and at least it was an honest expression of opinion."
"Edgar was furious and kicked him out of the house--not actually, you know, but he told him very plainly what he thought of him. They had a frightful row, and he said all sorts of things to Edgar--impertinent, even libellous things. Poor dear, he was very good about it, and, for my sake, took no further steps against Dr. Stephens, because he did not wish me to be worried."
"Since then I haven’t had anybody, and I’m just as well without anybody. Edgar is very clever. He studied medicine for a time before he went on the Stock Exchange, and I believe that it was because Stephens found that he knew a little too much that they quarrelled as they did. Edgar gives me all the medicine I need, which isn’t much--chiefly, sleeping-draughts. I used to have such dreadful nights before he took me in hand. Fancy! Dr. Stephens wanted to stop the sleeping-draughts."