When she had squeezed away the tears that had dimmed her eyes, she saw that his own were bright with them.  “He’s more than just a great man,” he said gravely.  Then, after a moment’s silence, “If there’s anything I can do...  It would be a great privilege to be of service to him.  As errand boy, any sort of helper.  I had some hospital experience at Bordeaux.”

It was, on the face of it, just such an offer as any kindly disposed inquirer would have made.  Such as Wallace Hood, for example, had, in fact, made, only rather more eloquently less than an hour ago.  But Mary’s impulse was not to answer as she had answered Wallace with a mere polite acknowledgment of helpless good intentions.  In fact, she could find, for the moment, no words in which to answer him at all.

He said then, “I mustn’t keep you.”

Even in response to that she made no movement of release.  “There’s nothing, even for me to do,” she said, and felt from the look this drew from him that he must, incredibly, have caught from her some inkling of what her admission really meant.

He did not repeat his move to go, nor speak, and there was silence between them for, perhaps, the better part of a minute.  It was terminated, startlingly, for her, by her brother’s appearance in the doorway.  He had on his raincoat and carried his hat and an umbrella in his hands.

“Mary, I’m just going out” ... he began, then broke off short, stared, and came on into the room.  March rose, but Mary, after one glance at Rush’s face, sat back a little more deeply in her seat.  Rush ignored her altogether.

“My sister has been away during the last few weeks,” he said to March.  It had, oddly, the effect of a set speech.  “If she had not been, I’m sure she would have told you, as I do now ...”  He stumbled there, evidently from the sudden blighting sense that he was talking like an actor—­or an ass.  “This isn’t the time for you to come here,” he went on.  “This house isn’t the place for you to come.  When my father’s well enough to take matters into his own hands again, he’ll do as he sees fit.  For the present you will have to consider that I’m acting for him.”

Mary’s eyes during the whole of that speech never wavered from March’s face.  There was nothing in it at all at first but clear astonishment, but presently there came a look of troubled concern that gave her an impulse to smile.  Evidently it disconcerted her brother heavily for at the end of an appalling silence, not long enough however, to allow March to get his wits together for a reply, Rush turned about abruptly and strode from the room.  A moment later they heard the house door close behind him.

The two in the drawing-room were left looking at each other.  Then, “Please sit down again,” she said.

CHAPTER XI

NOT COLLECTABLE

The effect of Rush’s interruption was rather that of a thunderclap, hardly more.  Recalling it, Mary remembered having looked again into March’s face as the street door banged shut to see whether he was laughing.  She herself was sharply aware of the comic effect of her brother’s kicking himself out of the house instead of his intended victim, but she could not easily have forgiven a sign of such awareness from March.