He closed it without uttering a word, and turned again to Deryck's letter; and Jane felt herself to be the crumb, or rather the camel, which he was finding it difficult to swallow.
She waited in respectful silence, and Deryck's words passed with calming effect through the palpitating suspense of her brain.

"The Gaelic mind works slowly, though it works exceeding sure.

He will be exceeding sure that I am a verra poor judge o' women." At last the little man on the hearth-rug lifted his eyes again to Jane's; and, alas, how high he had to lift them! "Nurse--er ?" he said inquiringly, and Jane thought his searching eyes looked like little bits of broken blue china in a hay-stack.
"Rosemary Gray," replied Jane meekly, with a curtsey in her voice; feeling as if they were rehearsing amateur theatricals at Overdene, and the next minute the duchess's cane would rap the floor and they would be told to speak up and not be so slow.
"Ah," said Dr.Robert Mackenzie, "I see." He stared hard at the carpet in a distant corner of the room, then walked across and picked up a spline broken from a bass broom; brought it back to the hearth-rug; examined it with minute attention; then put one end between his teeth and began to chew it.
Jane wondered what was the correct thing to do at this sort of interview, when a doctor neither sat down himself nor suggested that the nurse should do so.

She wished she had asked Deryck.

But he could not possibly have enlightened her, because the first thing he always said to a nurse was: "My dear Nurse SO-AND-SO, pray sit down.