"Hope," he told her bluntly. "Pray if you can. Cheer up your aunt a bit, if possible; she's in despair. Only don't try to take away any of her occupations. That's about all."
"In other words, nothing," she commented.
"Well, none of us can do much more than that," he said, "excepting always, Paula."
It was not until she had spent that heart-tearing five minutes at her father's bedside, while she talked cheerful little encouraging futilities in a voice dry with the effort she had to make to keep it from breaking, that she saw her aunt—and felt grateful for Doctor Darby's warning. Mary had never thought of Lucile before as an old woman, but she seemed more than that now,—broken and, literally, in despair—of her brother's life. And beyond this there was a bitterness which Mary could not, at first, account for.
"Paula, I hear, has allowed you to see him. For five minutes! Well, that is more than she has allowed me. Or any of us. It was a chance for showing off, I suppose, that was more than she could resist."
"I was a little afraid it might be that," Mary admitted. "Afraid of finding her—carefully costumed for the part, you know. But she wasn't. She didn't come into the room with me at all; just told me not to show I was shocked by the way he looked and not to let him talk. And she seemed glad I was back; not for me but because it might help him. It seems a miracle that he's still alive, after almost a week of that, and I guess it is she who has done it. They all say so."
"Men!" the old woman cried fiercely. "All men! The two nurses as well. There's something about her that makes idiots of all of them. She knows it. And she revels in it. It's the breath of life to her. She has played fast and loose with your father's happiness for it. And now she's playing with his life as well. And feeling, all the while, that it is a very noble repentance!"
"Repentance for what?" Mary asked. "Rush said something like that. I thought, before I went away, that father was getting reconciled to the Ravinia idea. Do you think it was worrying about …"
"No, I don't," Lucile interrupted shortly. "Your father was exposed, soaking wet, to a cold north wind, while he was driving forty miles in an open car. That's the reason he took pneumonia. And it's the only reason. I don't know what Rush may have been saying to you, but I've known your father ever since he was born, and I can tell you that Paula might have gone on making a fool of herself to the end of time without his dying of it. He was—fond of her, I will admit. But he had a life of his own that she knows nothing about. He was too proud to tell her about it, and she hadn't wit enough to see it for herself. That's the truth, and this emotional sprawl she's indulging in now doesn't change it.—Meanwhile, she is adding to her collection five new men!"
"I don't believe," said Mary quietly, "that there is one of them she knows exists. Or wouldn't poison," she added with a smile, "to improve father's chance of getting well."