It was half-past five and Dr. Bastian Cautley had put on his house jacket, loosened his waistcoat, settled down by his library fire with a pipe and a book, and was thanking Heaven that for once he had an hour to himself between his afternoon round and his time for consultation. He had been working hard ever since nine o'clock in the morning; but now nobody could have looked more superlatively lazy than Bastian Cautley as he stretched himself on two armchairs in an attitude of reckless ease. His very intellect (the most unrestful part of him) was at rest; all his weary being merged in a confused voluptuous sensation, a beatific state in which smoking became a higher kind of thinking, and thought betrayed an increasing tendency to end in smoke. The room was double-walled with book-shelves, and but for the far away underground humming of a happy maidservant the house was soundless. He rejoiced to think that there was not a soul in it above stairs to disturb his deep tranquility. At six o'clock he would have to take his legs off that chair, and get into a frock-coat; once in the frock-coat he would become another man, all patience and politeness. After six there would be no pipe and no peace for him, but the knocking and ringing at his front door would go on incessantly till seven-thirty. There was flattery in every knock, for it meant that Dr. Cautley was growing eminent, and that at the ridiculously early age of nine-and-twenty. There was a sharp ring now. He turned wearily in his chairs. "There's another damned patient," said Dr. Cautley. He was really so eminent that he could afford to think blasphemously of patients; and he had no love for those who came to consult him before their time. He sat up with his irritable nerves on edge. The servant was certainly letting somebody in, and from the soft rustling sounds in the hall he gathered that somebody was a woman; much patience and much politeness would then be required of him, and he was feeling anything but patient and polite. "Miss Rhoda Vivian" was the name on the card that was brought to him. He did not know Miss Rhoda Vivian.