'I think I know the worst,' she said to the famous surgeon whom she had come to consult, when he led her into his room. 'What I want to know is, can you put off this tiresome business until after my son's wedding?' He asked her quietly her reason for the delay. Few people argued with Mrs. Ogilvie; there was an inflexibility about her which made protest impossible. He knew that the case was a hopeless one, but life might certainly be prolonged if she would submit to treatment without delay. 'Why should you put it off?' he said; 'even five or six weeks may make an enormous difference.' 'I always put off disagreeable things,' said Mrs. Ogilvie lightly. A London doctor probably knows many cases of delicate and sensitive women who will fret over a crumpled rose-leaf and die with the calm courage of a martyr; but the woman who would deliberately throw away her chances of life was unfamiliar to the famous specialist. He looked keenly at his patient for a moment out of his deep eyes. 'I have never known a case of this sort in which there was not an immediate effort at concealment,' he said to himself; 'and women conceal most of their sicknesses as if they were crimes.' Aloud he asked her what was the earliest date at which she could put herself into his hands. 'It is a great bore coming at all,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, with that sort of superb impertinence which distinguished her and was hardly ever offensive; 'but let us say in a month's time. The wedding was not to have been till late in November; but my son and Miss Erskine are quite absurdly in love with each other, and it will not be difficult to persuade them to alter that date for an earlier one.' 'If you have positively decided to postpone treatment,' said the surgeon, 'I can say nothing more except to tell you that you are minimizing your chances of recovery.' 'I don't feel in the least like dying yet,' she said. 'Were you to put yourself into my hands at once,' he urged, 'it is possible that you might be sufficiently recovered to go to the wedding in November.' 'No one is to know anything about it,' said Mrs. Ogilvie quickly and decisively. 'If my son is married in October I can come up to town, as I always do in November, and go into one of your nursing-homes. Probably the wall-papers will offend me, but at least I shall not have the whole of a countryside discussing my helplessness and the various stages of my illness. Ye gods! they would like to ask for details from one's very footman at the hall door!' It was useless to say more. The surgeon recommended diet, and made out a prescription. 'Everything is talked about in these days, I admit,' he said, 'and I think no one regrets the decline of reserve more than we doctors do; but you are carrying a desire for concealment too far.'