“What I say is,” explained Mr. Gubbins to Elsie (he never gave this explanation to Onoria), “if he _does_ happen to be wrong and the trouble is, as I sometimes think, malignant, I shall have to pay in the end; he’ll get out of it all right. Doctors always do.” “Hadn’t you perhaps better consult another doctor?” asked Elsie timidly. She was always timid even with Mr. Gubbins, and even when she saw, as she frequently did, the plainest way out of his troubles; and Mr. Gubbins thought that timidity and sense were a delightful combination in a woman. “It’s not much use my doing that,” said Mr. Gubbins moodily. “They all stand in together you know. Medical etiquette, as they call it, is neither more nor less than a conspiracy against the public. “Besides, when you come to think of it, I’ve been to Jenkins on and off for thirty years, and I shouldn’t like to hurt his feelings, especially as it may not be cancer after all.” “What are you two talking about, over there in the shrubbery?” shouted Onoria from the window. Mr. Gubbins looked appealingly at Elsie. They both trembled, but Mr. Gubbins trembled most. “Slugs,” said Elsie in a wavering voice. Her eyes fell before the accusatory ones of Mr. Gubbins. He was thinking how true, how painfully true, Onoria’s theory was, as to the prevarication of women. Whatever the consequences might have been, he could not have told a lie to Onoria. He would not have dared. CHAPTER V Jealousy is one of the faults which it is hardest for human beings to confess. It is the least successful of the vices, for by its nature it implies that you find yourself less attractive than somebody else, and you are conscious that in the exercise of it, you become less attractive still. Fortunately righteous indignation often looks very like it. Miss Onoria Strickland never dreamed that she suffered from jealousy. She considered it a slave vice confined to women and exceptionally feeble men. She knew that her sisters-in-law were monsters of human iniquity; she realised that the other school teachers belonged to a bygone age and were unfortunate products even of that debased period. She saw that modernity and youth had lost alike their innocence and their ardour, at about the time when she herself had ceased to be young; and she despised women: but she did not realise that there was a connecting link between these criticisms, and that her own self-love was the connecting link. She was taken completely by surprise when Peter Gubbins and Elsie Andrews conspired behind her back to make a fool of her.