"Be silent, Mark!" burst from Oswald with a flash of anger. "I will not listen to such doctrine. The lives of the poor are every whit as valuable as are the lives of the rich. You did not learn that from Dr. Davenal." "What I meant was, that there'd not be half the public fuss," said Mark, looking little, and doing his best to explain away the impression given by his words. "I'm sure there _has_ been enough fuss in the town since her death was known, but I have not heard of one single person in it casting blame on us. Why should you seek to cast it? Errors in judgment are committed now and then in medical practice, just as they are in everything else and there's no help for it; they happen to the very best of us. If we could see the end of a thing at the beginning it would be different: but we can't. Could its effects on Lady Oswald have been anticipated, we'd have seen chloroform in the sea before it should have been given her. It was done for the best." "You think, then, that Dr. Davenal believed the giving it her would be for the best?" persisted Oswald, after listening patiently to the excited answer. Again came the perceptible hesitation in the manner of Mark; again the flush of embarrassment rose to his cheek. Oswald noted it. "I am quite sure that all the doctor ever did for Lady Oswald he did for the best," and Mark Cray plucked up courage and spirit as he said it: "that night as well as other nights which had gone before it I cannot think what you are driving at, Oswald." Oswald Cray determined to "drive" no more. He believed it would be useless, so far as Mark was concerned. He could not quite make him out: but he believed it would be useless. That there was something concealed, something not quite open, he saw; Mark's manner alone would have told him that: and he came rapidly to the conclusion that Mark had been cognisant also of his partner's opinion of chloroform as connected with Lady Oswald, and could not tell why he had tried it upon her, but did suppose, in spite of the face of affairs, that he had done it for the best. All Mark's embarrassment, his evasion, his crusty unwillingness to speak frankly, Oswald set down to an anxiety to screen Dr. Davenal from the reproach of imprudence. One more remark he did make. It arose to his mind as he was about to depart, and he spoke it on the spur of the thought. "I understand you fancy that Dr. Davenal absented himself from Hallingham to avoid attending the coroner's inquest." "Where on earth did you hear that?" shouted Mark, with a stare of surprise. "Your wife mentioned it to me just now." Mark Cray waxed wroth. "What idiots women are! The very best of them! I shan't be able to think my own thoughts next. Caroline knows I did not wish that repeated: it slipped from me without reflection." "It is quite safe with me, Mark. She looks upon me, I suppose, as one of yourselves. But why should Dr. Davenal have wished not to attend the inquest?"