Fanny's unforgiving master pointed to the door; she thanked Mr.
Vimpany, and went out. Lord Harry eyed his friend in angry amazement.
"Are you mad?" he asked.
"Tell me something first," the doctor rejoined. "Is there any English
blood in your family?"
Lord Harry answered with a burst of patriotic feeling: "I regret to say
my family is adulterated in that manner. My grandmother was an
Englishwoman."
Mr. Vimpany received this extract from the page of family history with
a coolness all his own.
"It's a relief to hear that," he said. "You may be capable (by the
grandmother's side) of swallowing a dose of sound English sense. I can
but try, at any rate. That woman is too bold and too clever to be
treated like an ordinary servant--I incline to believe that she is a
spy in the employment of your wife. Whether I am right or wrong in this
latter case, the one way I can see of paring the cat's claws is to turn
her into a nurse. Do you find me mad now?"
"Madder than ever!"
"Ah, you don't take after your grandmother! Now listen to me. Do we run
the smallest risk, if Fanny finds it her interest to betray us? Suppose
we ask ourselves what she has really found out. She knows we have got a
sick man from a hospital coming here--does she know what we want him
for? Not she! Neither you nor I said a word on that subject. But she
also heard us agree that your wife was in our way. What does that
matter? Did she hear us say what it is that we don't want your wife to
discover? Not she, I tell you again! Very well, then--if Fanny acts as
Oxbye's nurse, shy as the young woman may be, she innocently associates
herself with the end that we have to gain by the Danish gentleman's
death! Oh, you needn't look alarmed! I mean his natural death by lung
disease--no crime, my noble friend! no crime!"
The Irish lord, sitting near the doctor, drew his chair back in a
hurry.
"If there's English blood in my family," he declared, "I'll tell you
what, Vimpany, there's devil's blood in yours!"
"Anything you like but Irish blood," the cool scoundrel rejoined.
As he made that insolent reply, Fanny came in again, with a sufficient
excuse for her reappearance. She announced that a person from the
hospital wished to speak to the English doctor.
The messenger proved to be a young man employed in the secretary's
office. Oxbye still persisting in his desire to be placed under Mr.
Vimpany's care; one last responsibility rested on the official
gentlemen now in charge of him. They could implicitly trust the medical
assistance and the gracious hospitality offered to the poor Danish
patient; but, before he left them, they must also be satisfied that he
would be attended by a competent nurse. If the person whom Mr. Vimpany
proposed to employ in this capacity could be brought to the hospital,
it would be esteemed a favour; and, if her account of herself satisfied
the physician in charge of Oxbye's case, the Dane might be removed to
his new quarters on the same day.