The doctor has beaten me
already."
"Beaten you already?" Iris repeated. "Tell me plainly what you mean?"
"Here it is, if you please, as plainly as words can say it. Mr. Vimpany
has something--something wicked, of course--to say to my master; and he
won't let it pass his lips here, in the cottage."
"Why not?"
"Because he suspects me of listening at the door, and looking through
the keyhole. I don't know, my lady, that he doesn't even suspect You.
'I've learnt something in the course of my life,' he says to my master;
'and it's a rule with me to be careful of what I talk about indoors,
when there are women in the, house, What are you going to do
to-morrow?' he says. My lord told him there was to be a meeting at the
newspaper office. The doctor says: 'I'll go to Paris with you. The
newspaper office isn't far from the Luxembourg Gardens. When you have
done your business, you will find me waiting at the gate. What I have
to tell you, you shall hear out of doors in the Gardens--and in an open
part of them, too, where there are no lurking-places among the trees.'
My master seemed to get angry at being put off in this way. 'What is it
you have got to tell me?' he says.
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