before a door in deserted Harley Street.
An elderly man-servant showed her into the doctor's waiting-room, and
Mrs. Ogilvie sat down and began turning over with interest the pages of
a fashion magazine.

'I think I know the worst,' she said to the famous surgeon whom she had
come to consult, when he led her into his room. 'What I want to know
is, can you put off this tiresome business until after my son's
wedding?'

He asked her quietly her reason for the delay. Few people argued with
Mrs. Ogilvie; there was an inflexibility about her which made protest
impossible. He knew that the case was a hopeless one, but life might
certainly be prolonged if she would submit to treatment without delay.

'Why should you put it off?' he said; 'even five or six weeks may make
an enormous difference.'

'I always put off disagreeable things,' said Mrs. Ogilvie lightly.

A London doctor probably knows many cases of delicate and sensitive
women who will fret over a crumpled rose-leaf and die with the calm
courage of a martyr; but the woman who would deliberately throw away
her chances of life was unfamiliar to the famous specialist. He looked
keenly at his patient for a moment out of his deep eyes.

'I have never known a case of this sort in which there was not an
immediate effort at concealment,' he said to himself; 'and women
conceal most of their sicknesses as if they were crimes.' Aloud he
asked her what was the earliest date at which she could put herself
into his hands.

'It is a great bore coming at all,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, with that sort
of superb impertinence which distinguished her and was hardly ever
offensive; 'but let us say in a month's time. The wedding was not to
have been till late in November; but my son and Miss Erskine are quite
absurdly in love with each other, and it will not be difficult to
persuade them to alter that date for an earlier one.'

'If you have positively decided to postpone treatment,' said the
surgeon, 'I can say nothing more except to tell you that you are
minimizing your chances of recovery.'

'I don't feel in the least like dying yet,' she said.

'Were you to put yourself into my hands at once,' he urged, 'it is
possible that you might be sufficiently recovered to go to the wedding
in November.'

'No one is to know anything about it,' said Mrs. Ogilvie quickly and
decisively. 'If my son is married in October I can come up to town, as
I always do in November, and go into one of