"Something great is going to happen. Now is the acceptable hour!"
It was utterly outside her experience. It was a voice which chilled and frightened her. She didn't want to hear voices like this.
Even as Mary spoke, Marjorie Kirwan heard a change in her voice. The brougham was quite still, and the long string of vehicles which were passing in the other direction were motionless also.
Mary was staring out of the window at a hansom cab that was its immediate vis-à-vis.
Two men were in the cab.
One of them, a small, eager-faced man flushed with excitement, was bowing to Mary.
The other, taller, and very pale of face, was looking at the hospital nurse with the wildest and most burning gaze the society girl had ever seen.
"Who are they?" Marjorie whispered, though even as she asked she knew.
"The man I saved from death," Mary answered, in a low, quivering voice, "and the man Joseph—Joseph!"
She sank back against the cushions of the carriage in a dead faint.