CHARTERIS (ignoring the hint and coolly taking a chair beside him). Why don't you get married, Paramore? You know it's a scandalous thing for a man in your profession to be single. PARAMORE (shortly, still pretending to read). That's my own business, not yours. CHARTERIS. Not at all: it's pre-eminently a social question. You're going to get married, aren't you? PARAMORE. Not that I am aware of. CHARTERIS (alarmed). No! Don't say that. Why? PARAMORE (rising angrily and rapping one of the SILENCE placards). Allow me to call your attention to that. (He crosses to the easy chair near the revolving bookstand, and flings himself into it with determined hostility.) CHARTERIS (following him, too deeply concerned to mind the rebuff). Paramore: you alarm me more than I can say. You've been and muffed this business somehow. I know perfectly well what you've been up to; and I fully expected to find you a joyful accepted suitor. PARAMORE (angrily). Yes, you have been watching me because you admire Miss Craven yourself. Well, you may go in and win now. You will be pleased to hear that I am a ruined man. CHARTERIS. You! Ruined! How? The turf? PARAMORE (contemptuously). The turf!! Certainly not. CHARTERIS. Paramore: if the loan of all I possess will help you over this difficulty, you're welcome to it. PARAMORE (rising in surprise). Charteris! I-- (suspiciously.) Are you joking? CHARTERIS. Why on earth do you always suspect me of joking? I never was more serious in my life. PARAMORE (shamed by Charteris's generosity). Then I beg your pardon. I thought the news would please you. CHARTERIS (deprecating this injustice to his good feeling). My dear fellow--! PARAMORE. I see I was wrong. I am really very sorry. (They shake hands.) And now you may as well learn the truth. I had rather you heard it from me than from the gossip of the club. My liver discovery has been--er--er--(he cannot bring himself to say it). CHARTERIS (helping him out). Confirmed? (Sadly.) I see: the poor Colonel's doomed. PARAMORE. No: on the contrary, it has been--er--called in question. The Colonel now believes himself to be in perfectly good health; and my friendly relations with the Cravens are entirely spoiled. CHARTERIS. Who told him about it? PARAMORE. I did, of course, the moment I read the news in this. (He shews the Journal and puts it down on the bookstand.) CHARTERIS. Why, man, you've been a messenger of glad tidings! Didn't you congratulate him? PARAMORE (scandalised). Congratulate him! Congratulate a man on the worst blow pathological science has received for the last three hundred years!