"Well, Mary, is it actually you, doing nothing?" he said, cheerily.
She turned round with a start, and a flush of color swept across her face.
"How you startled me," she said. "I am glad indeed to see you. I did not think you would be out so soon. Surely it is very foolish of you coming so far."
"Still thinking you are a nurse, Mary," he laughed. "I can assure you I am very prudent, and I have been brought up here in a carriage a carriage—with live horses. Dr. Swinburne told me you had not got over the effects of your hard work, and that he had had to order you to take tonics, so you see instead of being a nurse you are a patient at present, while I am a free man. I came out of hospital yesterday morning, and we had a grand supper last night out of my hoards, which I found just as I had left them, which says wonders for the honesty of the Parisians in general, and for the self-denial of my friend René Caillard in particular."
"Why, I should have thought——" and she stopped, abruptly.
"What would you have thought, Miss Brander?"
"Oh, nothing."
"No, no, I cannot be put off in that way. You were going to say that you thought I should have distributed my stores long ago, or that I ought to have sent for them for the use of the hospital. I really ought to have done so. It would have been only fair, but in fact the idea never occurred to me. René had the keys of my rooms and I told him to use the stores as he liked, meaning for himself and for our comrades of the studio."
"I should have thought," she began again, and then, as before, hesitated, and then asked, abruptly, "Have you not something to tell me, Cuthbert—something that an old friend would tell to another? I have been expecting you to tell me all the time you were in the hospital, and have felt hurt you did not."
Cuthbert looked at her in surprise. There was a slight flush on her cheek and it was evident that she was deeply in earnest.