“Not monetary help. Besides, he didn’t worry much about getting you talked of, did he?”
Hal was just going to make a sarcastic retort, when Dick reappeared, and the matter was dropped.
But when she came to think of it afterwards, she could not but be a little struck at Alymer’s attitude, and wondered why he had taken so much interest in her action.
A few days later Basil Hayward died.
Hal was not there at the time, but Dudley had not come home at all the previous night, and she was afraid that his friend was worse. In the afternoon she had been detained at the office, and she hardly liked to go up to Holloway in the evening without knowing if she was wanted.
So she sat anxiously waiting for Dudley. When at last he arrived he looked haggard and worn and ill. Hal stood up when he came in, and waited for him to speak.
“It’s all over,” he said, and sank into his chair as if he were dead-beat.
Hal’s hart ached with sympathy. She felt instinctively there was more here than grief for a friend whose death could only be regarded as a merciful release.
She was right. For the last three weeks Dudley and Ethel had been in almost daily contact beside the dying man’s bed. Silently, devotedly they had served him together.
But while Ethel was occupied only with the sufferer, Dudley, in the long night-watches, had seen at last what manner of woman it was he had passed by for the pretty, shallow, selfish little sister.