The doctor is
Rhoda's good genius, and the doctor's wife is her fairy godmother."
Mountjoy's courtesy having offered the customary congratulations, the
maid was permitted to retire; and Iris was free to express her
astonishment at the friendly relations established (by means of the
dinner-table) between the two most dissimilar men on the face of
creation.
"There is something overwhelming," she declared, "in the bare idea of
your having asked him to dine with you--on such a short acquaintance,
and being such a man! I should like to have peeped in, and seen you
entertaining your guest with the luxuries of the hotel larder.
Seriously, Hugh, your social sympathies have taken a range for which I
was not prepared. After the example that you have set me, I feel
ashamed of having doubted whether Mr. Vimpany was worthy of his
charming wife. Don't suppose that I am ungrateful to the doctor! He has
found his way to my regard, after what he has done for Rhoda. I only
fail to understand how he has possessed himself of _your_ sympathies."
So she ran on, enjoying the exercise of her own sense of humour in
innocent ignorance of the serious interests which she was deriding.
Mountjoy tried to stop her, and tried in vain.
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