e 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.

He had betrayed none, had tried, she thought--his amazement and concern
had rendered him pretty near inarticulate--to tell her what the look in
his face had already made evident even to Rush; his innocence not only of
any amorous intent toward Paula but even of the possibility that any one
could have interpreted the relation between them in that way. He might
have managed some such repudiation as that had she no