Consulting Surgeon Read Online Free

have.”
    Coralie spread the fingers of one hand in order to examine her manicure. “It sounds a bit involved and unnecessary—as if you had been fiercely keeping a bargain with yourself rather than with Mummy.” She paused, then added thoughtfully: “Bear—why don’t you marry Ned?”
    “ Marry Ned ?” Ursula’s hairbrush, sweeping deeply into her shining waves, was suddenly arrested as she turned to face her stepsister. “Marry Ned? Coralie, what do you mean?”
    Coralie was on the defensive at once. “You needn’t look so startled. He is awfully fond of you—”
    “No more than of you. And he is old —he was Daddy’s friend!”
    “He is only about forty, and I always thought he was more of a protégé of your father’s—anyway, much younger. There’s nothing so very odd in the idea.”
    “But there is. Even if he is only forty, I’m only twenty-four. He hasn’t a thought beyond his science, and I’m not looking for a husband. As an idea it’s more than odd—it’s ludicrous.”
    “It’s not.” Coralie sounded sulky. “He is in love with you—so far as he could remember to be in love with anyone. Anyway, Mummy says all that doglike devotion of his isn’t healthy, if it doesn’t mean anything. And even if he is staid and stuffy—” She broke off. Perhaps, even to Bear, she could not quite say that!
    But Ursula had taken her unspoken meaning. Quietly, trying to see the humor of it, she said. “You’re implying that I’m staid and stuffy too?”
    “I didn’t say so.”
    “But you were going to say it.” Ursula turned back to the dressing-table and took up her hairbrush again. “Sorry, Coralie, but even if I agreed that Ned was dull and that I matched him in it, it still wouldn’t seem to me to add up to a good reason for our marrying. I should forget it, if I were you.”
    When Coralie had returned to her own room Ursula sat staring at her reflection in the mirror and pressing the bristles of the brush hard into the palm of her hand.
    She wanted passionately to deny Coralie’s criticism. Was it possible that to Coralie’s nineteen-year-old eyes she appeared so “set” that there seemed no difference either in age or in outlook between herself and Ned? And could Coralie really believe that Ned had ever thought of her in any other way than as his younger sister?
    A sudden disturbing thought prompted—could Coralie believe it because Ned himself had allowed her to? Little things began to take on significance. He had never before gone to the trouble to meet her at Waterloo. His kiss had meant nothing, though she supposed that that man “Matthew” would have been a witness of it. But there had been Ned’s stolid: “I wasn’t taking Coralie—just you.” Her own surprise, not acute enough at the time, seemed now to have been justified.
    She stood up abruptly, pushing away the intrusive thoughts. She could not love Ned and she did not want him to love her. She did not want to lose Ned as a friend. But perhaps it was already too late for that. For her stepmother had already laid a distasteful finger upon their happy relationship, calling it “unhealthy”. And now Coralie, if not Ned himself, had done the rest. Why, oh, why must people spoil things so?
    Mrs. Craig had returned from her bridge party before the girls were ready to leave. But though she had been invited she did not accompany them, saying she was going straight to bed.
    “Oh, Mummy, not one of your headaches again?” cried Coralie.
    Mrs. Craig pressed graceful fingers to her temples and closed her eyes. “I’m afraid so. This one promises to be a demon.”
    “You haven’t mentioned them in your letters. Do you have them often?” asked Ursula in concern.
    “Increasingly, lately. I must see someone about them if they go on.”
    “You certainly must. Wouldn’t you like me to stay with you instead of going out?”
    “No, no. Go along with Coralie. It is quite enough to expect Mrs. Grazebrook to excuse one of