"I understood that we were not to be disturbed at any time," she said, meeting his look with that icy pride of hers that was the only weapon at her command. "Surely some other arrangement can be made?"
Sheppard growled out a strangled oath; she always made him feel at a disadvantage, this slip of a girl whom he could have picked up with one hand had he chosen.
"I tell you, this room is wanted," he reiterated stormily. "You'd better clear out at once."
"Bunny can't possibly be moved to-day," Maud said quickly and decidedly. "He is in pain. Can't you see for yourself how impossible it is? I am quite sure no visitor who knew the facts of the case would wish to turn him out."
Sheppard stamped a furious foot. He was getting up his fury; and suddenly she saw that he had been drinking. The knowledge came upon her in a flash of understanding, and with it a disgust so complete that it overwhelmed every other consideration.
She pointed to the door. "Go!" she said, in tense, frozen accents. "Go at once! How dare you come in here in this state?"
Before her withering disdain he drew back, as it were involuntarily. He even half turned to obey. Then, suddenly some devil prompted him, and he swung back again. With one gigantic stride he reached the sofa; and before either brother or sister knew what he intended to do he had roughly seized upon the boy's slight body and lifted it in his great arms.
Bunny's agonized outcry at the action mingled with his sister's, but it ceased almost immediately. He collapsed in the giant grip like an empty sack, and Sheppard, now wrought to a blind fury that had no thought for consequences, carried him from the room and along the passage to the stairs, utterly unheeding the fact that he had fainted.
Maud, nearly beside herself, went with him, striving to support the limp body where long experience had taught her support was needed. They went up the stairs so, flight after flight, Sheppard savage and stubborn, the girl in a dumb agony of anxiety, seeking only to relieve the dreadful strain that had bereft Bunny of his senses.
They reached at length a room at the top of the house, a bare garret of a place with sloping ceiling and uncarpeted floor. There was a bed under the skylight, and on this the man deposited his burden.