Insensibly the doctor's tone during the conversation grew more friendly, as it proceeded. A convinced opponent of "feminism" in all its forms, he had thought of Delia hitherto as merely a wrong-headed, foolish girl, and could hardly bring himself to be civil at all to her chaperon, who in his eyes belonged to a criminal society, and was almost certainly at that very moment engaged in criminal practices. But Delia, absorbed in the distresses of someone she cared for, all heart and eager sympathy, her loveliness lending that charm to all she said and looked which plainer women must so frequently do without was a very mollifying and ingratiating spectacle. France began to think her--misled and unbalanced of course--but sound at bottom. He ended by promising to make all arrangements himself, and to go in that very afternoon to see the great man at Brownmouth. When Delia returned to her maid's room, the morphia which had been administered was beginning to take effect, and Weston, an elderly woman with a patient, pleasing face, lay comparatively at rest, her tremulous look expressing at once the keenness of the suffering past, and the bliss of respite. Delia bent over her, dim-eyed. "Dear Weston--we've arranged it all--it's going to be done here. You'll be at home--and I shall look after you." Weston put out a clammy hand and faintly pressed Delia's warm fingers-- "But you were going to London, Miss. I don't want to put you out so." "I shan't go till you're out of the wood, so go to sleep--and don't worry." * * * * * "Delia!--for Heaven's sake be reasonable. Leave Weston to France, and a couple of good nurses. She'll be perfectly looked after. You'll put out all out plans--you'll risk everything!" Gertrude Marvell had risen from her seat in front of a crowded desk. The secretary who generally worked with her in the old gun room, now become a militant office, had disappeared in obedience to a signal from her chief. Anger and annoyance were plainly visible on Gertrude's small chiselled features. Delia shook her head. "I can't!" she said. "I've promised. Weston has pulled _me_ through two bad illnesses--once when I had pneumonia in Paris--and once after a fall out riding. I daresay I shouldn't be here at all, but for her. If she's going to have a fight for her life--and Doctor France doesn't promise she'll get through--I shall stand by her." Gertrude grew a little sallower than usual as her black eyes fastened themselves on the girl before her who had hitherto seemed so ductile in her hands. It was not so much the incident itself that alarmed her as a certain new tone in Delia's voice. "I thought we had agreed--that nothing--_nothing_--was to come before the Cause!" she said quietly, but insistently. Delia's laugh was embarrassed. "I never promised to desert Weston, Gertrude. I couldn't--any more than I could desert you."