“Unless you want any one?”
Wareham hastened to repudiate such a need, looked at his watch, and yawned.
“Turn in,” Colonel Martyn suggested benevolently, and spoke of the wakeful nights the other had spent.
“Mrs Martyn asked me to wait for her.” He avoided Anne’s name.
“I’ll go and hurry her up.”
In spite of this fresh propelling force, long minutes passed before Mrs Martyn rustled back alone, but in high spirits.
“I am really so sorry, Mr Wareham! Anne is such a strange girl, one never knows how to take her, and she says she can see no one more. But, after all, she has come to her senses about leaving, and agrees to go to-morrow. Congratulate me.”
“I am only sorry my name should have been intruded on Miss Dalrymple,” said Wareham gravely. “She understood, I hope, that you imagined she had something to say to me?”
“I dare say. It really does not matter,” Mrs Martyn returned airily, and he began to discern where the intention had lain. It annoyed him both then and when he afterwards thought of it.
In the room of death, his last look at Hugh’s boyish quiet face made his promise take the form of a most willing offer. Nothing more remained that he could do to please him. Friendship and sympathy were closed for ever here. Only this was left, and it had already become sacred. The look in Hugh’s eyes, the touch of his hand, rose up before him—witnesses.