"Yes, indeed," acquiesced Mrs. Morris, suddenly looking like Baedeker.
"The young lady--I am sorry you could not go in her place! Yes, I am!--will live at the same hotel with the patient and become acquainted with her--and advise her to see a physician regularly--a specialist in kidney diseases. We think her only daughter ought to be with her. But you can't say anything to either of them, because if the mother doesn't think she is ill the daughter cannot know it, either. We only suspect it is Bright's. You can't afford to wait until you have to go to bed with Bright's--can you?"
"No, indeed!" gravely agreed Mrs. Morris, specialist.
"So now you know what sort of a girl I wish--one who will be there if the trouble should take a sudden turn for the worse; one who will induce the old lady to consult a physician. Do I have to give a preliminary fee?"
"Not at all. Call this afternoon at four and I'll try to have one of my best nurses here. She is--well, quite young; in fact"--with what might be called a desiccated archness--"she is a little younger than I and quite pretty. I call her handsome!"
Some women are so sure of their own position that they do not fear competition.
"Thank you! I'll be here at four, sharp." And Mr. Jemingham went away without having given his name to Mrs. Morris.
At four o'clock Mr. Jemingham called at Mrs. Charlton Morris's agency and had an interview with Miss Kathryn Keogh. Mrs. Morris gave them the use of her own little private office; Jemingham very impressively waited for Miss Keogh to sit down and then did so himself.
He threw at Miss Keogh one of those inventorying looks that women find so difficult to appear unconscious of, probably because they know their own weak points.
Miss Keogh was beautiful--and when an Irish girl is beautiful she is beautiful in so many ways! She had the wonderful complexion of her race and a mouth carved out of heaven's prize strawberry. Her eyes were an incredibly deep blue when they were not an incredibly deep pansy-purple, and they were abysses of velvet. In the darkness, without seeing them--just by remembering them--you loved those eyes. In the light, when you could see them, you simply worshiped! Her throat was one of those paradoxical affairs, soft and hard, which made you think at one and the same time of marble and rose-leaves--Solomon's tower of ivory, crowned by the glory of golden-brown hair, so fine that you thought of clouds of it!