His hand was again on the bell, and was about to be used with vigour, when the door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered.
The door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered; but she did so very slowly, as though she were afraid to come into her own dining-room.
We must go back a little and see how she had been employed during those twenty minutes.
"Oh, laws!" Such had been her first exclamation on hearing that the doctor was in the dining-room.

She was standing at the time with her housekeeper in a small room in which she kept her linen and jam, and in which, in company with the same housekeeper, she spent the happiest moments of her life.
"Oh laws! now, Hannah, what shall we do ?" "Send 'un up at once to master, my lady! let John take 'un up." "There'll be such a row in the house, Hannah; I know there will." "But sure-ly didn't he send for 'un?
Let the master have the row himself, then; that's what I'd do, my lady," added Hannah, seeing that her ladyship still stood trembling in doubt, biting her thumb-nail.
"You couldn't go up to the master yourself, could you now, Hannah ?" said Lady Scatcherd in her most persuasive tone.
"Why no," said Hannah, after a little deliberation; "no, I'm afeard I couldn't." "Then I must just face it myself." And up went the wife to tell her lord that the physician for whom he had sent had come to attend his bidding.
In the interview which then took place the baronet had not indeed been violent, but he had been very determined.

Nothing on earth, he said, should induce him to see Dr Fillgrave and offend his dear old friend Dr Thorne.
"But Roger," said her ladyship, half crying, or rather pretending to cry in her vexation, "what shall I do with the man?
How shall I get him out of the house ?" "Put him under the pump," said the baronet; and he laughed his peculiar low guttural laugh, which told so plainly of the havoc which brandy had made in his throat.
"That's nonsense, Roger; you know I can't put him under the pump.

Now you are ill, and you'd better see him just for five minutes.

I'll make it all right with Dr Thorne." "I'll be d---- if I do, my lady." All the people about Boxall Hill called poor Lady Scatcherd "my lady" as if there was some excellent joke in it; and, so, indeed, there was.
"You know you needn't mind nothing he says, nor yet take nothing he sends: and I'll tell him not to come no more.