“It's a ridiculous business,” he said. “That precious young Sanitist has so worked his confounded theories into Thyme that she has gone off to the Euston Road to put them into practice, of all things!”
At the half-concerned amusement on Hilary's face his quick and rather narrow eyes glinted.
“It's not exactly for you to laugh, Hilary,” he said. “It's all of a piece with your cursed sentimentality about those Hughs, and that girl. I knew it would end in a mess.”
Hilary answered this unjust and unexpected outburst by a look, and Stephen, with the strange feeling of inferiority which would come to him in Hilary's presence against his better judgment, lowered his own glance.
“My dear boy,” said Hilary, “if any bit of my character has crept into Thyme, I'm truly sorry.”
Stephen took his brother's hand and gave it a good grip; and, Cecilia coming in, they all sat down.
Cecilia at once noted what Stephen in his preoccupation had not—that Hilary had come to tell them something. But she did not like to ask him what it was, though she knew that in the presence of their trouble Hilary was too delicate to obtrude his own. She did not like, either, to talk of her trouble in the presence of his. They all talked, therefore, of indifferent things—what music they had heard, what plays they had seen—eating but little, and drinking tea. In the middle of a remark about the opera, Stephen, looking up, saw Martin himself standing in the doorway. The young Sanitist looked pale, dusty, and dishevelled. He advanced towards Cecilia, and said with his usual cool determination:
“I've brought her back, Aunt Cis.”
At that moment, fraught with such relief, such pure joy, such desire to say a thousand things, Cecilia could only murmur: “Oh, Martin!”
Stephen, who had jumped up, asked: “Where is she?”