"And yet I have been a brute, a senseless, idiotic beast. But that's all over, Lady Okehampton. Love her! I would lie outside her door, like that dog of hers, all through the long night only to get a smile and a touch of her hand in the morning. Love her! I loved her for five patient years, loved her passionately, and kept myself in check, and behaved like an elder brother. I, the man no woman could trust. Love her! The picture of her childish prettiness at Disbrowe was in my memory when I was going to the devil at Simla. You don't know what men are made of. You only know the model English gentleman, like your husband." "Okehampton has never given me any trouble, except in his young days, when he used to ride dangerous horses. I know I have been exceptionally fortunate in my husband; and, of course, I know that modern husbands and wives are utterly unlike us; but I must say that your behaviour at your wife's last party was inexcusable. The dear Princess was sadly huffed; and I doubt if Vera will ever get her to her house again." "I don't think Vera will try." "But she ought to try. The Princess Hermione has been perfectly sweet about her." "Vera doesn't care. That's her worst symptom, that I know of. She has left off caring about things." "And that is a very bad symptom," said Lady Okehampton. "When Chagford's wife showed signs of it, I bundled her off to a nursing home for six weeks, and she came out of it just in time for Ascot, and as keen as mustard, as Chagford said in his vulgar way. She had been dieted, and massaged, and not allowed to see anyone but her nurses; and she was quite cured of not caring. She romped with her children, and ate jam pudding like one of them." "Ah, you see there were children," sighed Claude. "There was something for her to come back to." "Vera and you ought to have had a family. It is very disappointing," said Aunt Mildred, and the tone implied that when she said "disappointing" she meant "reprehensible." "Never mind," she went on presently, in a more hopeful tone, "don't be down-hearted, Claude. If doctors can cure her, she shall be another woman before the end of the year." "You love doctors much better than I do," said Claude, grasping her hands. "Find the man who can cure her and I will worship him." * * * * * After this Vera entered upon a wide acquaintance with the fashionable specialists: the man who was invincible in treatment of lung trouble; the only authority upon cardiac disorders; the man who knew more about the nervous system than any other physician in Europe; the man who had given his life to the study of the digestive organs; the hypnotic doctor, and the mesmerist; and finally, as a condescension, the all-round or common-sense man who might be consulted about anything, and sometimes, as it were by rule of thumb, succeeded where the specialists had failed.