Jerrold Maisie Anne Eliot

i Maisie lay in bed, helpless and abandoned to her illness. It was no good
trying to cover it up and hide it any more. Jerrold knew.

The night when he left Anne he had gone up to Maisie in her room. He
couldn't rest unless he knew that she was all right. He had stooped over
her to kiss her and she had sat up, holding her face to him, her hands
clasped round his neck, drawing him close to her, when suddenly the pain
gripped her and she lay back in his arms, choking, struggling for
breath.

Jerrold thought she was dying. He waited till the pain passed and she
was quieted, then he ran downstairs and telephoned for Ransome. He
looked on in agony while Ransome's stethoscope wandered over Maisie's
thin breast and back. It seemed to him that Ransome was taking an
unusually long time about it, that he must be on the track of some
terrible discovery. And when Ransome took the tubes from his ears and
said, curtly, "Heart quite sound; nothing wrong there," he was convinced
that Ransome was an old fool who didn't know his business. Or else he
was lying for Maisie's sake.

Downstairs in the library he turned on him.

"Look here; there's no good lying to me. I want truth."

"My dear Fielding, I shouldn't dream of lying to you. There's nothing
wrong with your wife's heart. Nothing organically wrong."

"With that pain? She was in agony, Ransome, agony. Why can't you tell me
at once that it's angina?"