ys been the subject of
more or less caustic jesting on Chesney's part. In an evil mood, he
seemed to enjoy nothing better than baiting his brother and Bellamy,
turn and turn about.

Bellamy was a Baliol man and so was Gerald. Cecil used to say that
Baliol bred what Byron called "excellent persons of the third-sex." He
used to harangue the two celibates rather brilliantly on the subject of
sex in mind--quoting Mommson and other authorities to prove that "genius
is in proportion to passion."

But Bellamy was an able man in his way. He had studied medicine in
Edinburgh and Vienna. He was far better posted than his London confrere,
Hopkins, on the vagaries of the morphia habit. Besides, Lady Wychcote
had had a talk with him in her private sitting-room before sending him
upstairs. Now as he sat, parrying Cecil's rather ill-tempered thrusts
with imperturbable good-humour, he was watching him narrowly out of his
large, vague looking eyes, though he seemed casual enough. He saw
clearly that Cecil was getting more morphia than Gaynor's record showed.
He had decided, before talking to him for twenty minutes, that a trained
nurse was indispensable--one, moreover, who had been on such cases
before, and had nerve and character. Hopkins had not engaged a nurse
because the only one of whom he knew, perfectly suited for the purpose,
had still ten days on a similar case before she would be free. In his
pocket Bellamy had the address of this nurse--Anne Harding--Hopkins had
sent it to him the day before. She would be free to accept another
engagement on the twelfth--that was to-morrow.

He determined, with Mrs. Chesney's and Lady Wychcote's approval, to wire
her that afternoon.

However, Bellamy made a serious mistake in not speaking openly to
Chesney about his intention of sending for the nurse. Sophy had to break
this news to him, and he received it with a burst of appalling fury
against the doctor.

"Damned little sneak!" he cried, his face convulsed. "Why the devil
didn't he say so to _me_?" His language became so outrageous that Sophy
rose, saying:

"I must leave you, if you talk like this."

Something in her white face--a sort of smothered loathing--checked him.

"See here," he said, mastering himself by a violent effort--a vein in
the middle of his forehead stood out dark and purplish; "now just try to
take this in, all of you--my well-wishers. To do anything with me
whatever, you've got to be straight with me, by God! I