She turned to Clifford. “Am I needed here?”
Clifford shook his head.
“Then I think I’ll be going back to town,” she said quietly.
Morton held out his hand, which she took. “You are the strangest person I ever knew,” he said huskily. “Good-bye, Mary,—and—and God bless you!”
“Good-bye,” said his daughter-in-law.
She turned and went out. Clifford watched her as she passed through the broad hospital corridor and then disappeared down the wide stairway.
“Mr. Morton,” said Clifford, “I’m not needed either—Lieutenant Kelly will remain in charge here. I’ll be going back to the city, too.”
Mr. Morton gripped Clifford’s hand. “Thanks, Clifford—and good-bye.” The habitually hard face softened yet further, and his voice lowered. “And, Clifford,—you’re a lucky man, if it turns out the way I think it will!”
It did. In the deepening dusk of a month later, from an interior and out-of-the-way county seat whose records were rarely looked over by inquisitive eyes that had an interest in transmitting what they saw to New York City, Clifford was driving a small roadster at an easy pace, one passenger beside him. A few minutes before that passenger had undergone a change of name. In New York City, if all went as expected, it would merely be known that she had changed her name from Mary Regan to Mary Clifford.