"Miss Marjorie has returned, my lady," he said. "She is waiting below in the motor-brougham. I was to say that if Miss Lys was ready Miss Marjorie has a free hour, and will drive Miss Lys back to the hospital."
"There, there!" Lady Kirwan said to her niece, "Marjorie will take you back to that place. It will be more comfortable than a horrid, stuffy omnibus. Now don't give me any answer at present, but just think over what I have said very seriously. Come again in a week, and we will have another talk. Don't be in a hurry to decide. And remember, dear, that with all your exaggerated ideas of duty, you may owe a duty to your relations and to society quite as much as to indigent aliens in Whitechapel. Run along, and be a dear good girl, and be sure you don't catch some dreadful infectious disease."
A couple of footmen in knee-breeches, silk stockings, and powdered hair stood on each side of the door. A ponderous butler opened it, another footman in motor livery jumped down from his seat beside the driver and held open the door of the brougham.
"All this pomp and circumstance," Mary thought sadly, "to get a poor hospital nurse out of a house and into a carriage. Four great men are employed to do so simple a thing as that, and whole families of my dear people are starving while the breadwinner lies sick in the hospital!"
She sighed heavily, and her face was sad as she kissed the brilliant, vivacious cousin who was waiting in the brougham.
"Well, you poor dear," Marjorie Kirwan said. "And how are you? I suppose the usual thing has happened? Mother has been imploring you to take a proper place in the world—you and my delightfully mysterious cousin Lluellyn, who is quite like an old Hebrew prophet—and you have said that you prefer your grubby scarlet-fever friends in Whitechapel!"
Mary nodded.
"Dear auntie," she said. "She is wonderfully kind and good, but she doesn't quite understand. But don't let us talk about it."
"Very well, then, we won't," Marjorie answered affectionately. "Every one must gang their own gait! You don't like what I like; I don't like what you like. The great thing is to be happy, and we're both that. Tell me something of your work. It always interests me. Have you had any new adventures in Whitechapel?"
"Everything has been much the same," she said, "except that a very wonderful personality has come into the hospital."