There was one person who could tell her all these things, and that was Margaret. Without exactly formulating a plan Cora went to the hospital one day and inquired about him. The girl at the desk answered as if Valentine were already a personage of the hospital.
"He's getting along splendidly now. His wife's with him."
"I wonder," Cora heard herself saying, "whether Mrs. Bing would see me for a minute."
She retired, rather frightened at her temerity, to the reception room, where the Lesson in Anatomy still dominated the wall. "Margaret won't mind," she kept telling herself. "She's so kind, and, anyhow, she's more like his mother than his wife." It was on this maternal quality that Cora depended.
There was a footstep in the hall. A statuesque figure molded into blue serge stood in the doorway—bare-headed with shiny bronze-colored hair elaborately looped and curled. It was Hermione.
"You wanted to see me?" she asked in her drawling, reconstructed voice. She did not at once recognize Cora.
"No," said Cora, "I certainly did not want to see you. I thought it was Mrs. Johnson-Bing who was here."
"Margaret?" replied Hermione. She drooped her thick eyelids and smiled, as if the name itself were comic—she never broke her beautiful mask with a laugh.
"No, that didn't last long. He bounced Margaret as soon as he got over being delirious."
"And was it then that he sent for you?" asked Cora with an edge to her voice that a Damascus blade might have envied.