Chapter 14 - Page 2

better. I
want to ask you some questions. I will not tire you."

He began to ask her questions very gently as if he did not wish to alarm
or disturb her. She had been found in a dead faint lying on the landing.
She had remained unconscious for an abnormally long time. When she had
been brought out of one faint she had fallen into another and this had
happened again and again. The indication was that she had been struck
down by some shock. In examining her he had found that she was
underweight. He wished to discover if she had been secretly working too
late at night in her deep interest in what she was doing. What exactly
had her diet been? Had she taken enough exercise in the open air? How
had she slept? The Duchess was seriously anxious.

They were the questions doctors always asked people except that he
seemed more desirous of being sure of the amount of exercise she had
taken than about anything else. He was specially interested in the times
when she had been in the country. She was obliged to tell him she had
always been alone. He thought it would have been better if she had had
some companion. Once when he was asking her about her visits to Mrs.
Bennett's cottage the blackness almost engulfed her again. But he was
watching her very closely and perhaps seeing her turn white--gave her
some stimulant in time. He had a clever face which was not unkind, but
she wished that it had not had such a keenly watchful look. More than
once the watchfulness tired her and she closed her eyes because she did
not want him to look into them--as if he were asking questions which
were not altogether doctors' questions.

When he left her and went downstairs to talk to the Duchess he asked a
good many quiet questions again. He was a man whose intense interest in
his profession did not confine itself wholly to its scientific aspect.
An extraordinarily beautiful child swooning into death was not a mere
pathological incident to him. And he knew many strange things brought
about by the abnormal conditions of war. He himself was conscious of
being overstrung with the rest of a tormented world.

He knew of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and he had heard more stories of her
household, her loveliness and Lord Coombe than he had time to remember.
He had, of course, heard the unsavoury rumours of the child who was
being brought up for some nefarious object. As he knew Lord Coombe
rather well he did not believe stories about him which went beyond a
certain limit. Not until he had talked to the Duchess for some time did
he discover that the hard-smitten child lying half-lifeless in her bed
was the very young heroine of the quite favourite scandal. The knowledge
gave him furiously to think. It was Coombe who had interested the