* * * * *
"Delia!—for Heaven's sake be reasonable. Leave Weston to France, and a couple of good nurses. She'll be perfectly looked after. You'll put out all out plans—you'll risk everything!"
Gertrude Marvell had risen from her seat in front of a crowded desk. The secretary who generally worked with her in the old gun room, now become a militant office, had disappeared in obedience to a signal from her chief. Anger and annoyance were plainly visible on Gertrude's small chiselled features.
Delia shook her head.
"I can't!" she said. "I've promised. Weston has pulled me through two bad illnesses—once when I had pneumonia in Paris—and once after a fall out riding. I daresay I shouldn't be here at all, but for her. If she's going to have a fight for her life—and Doctor France doesn't promise she'll get through—I shall stand by her."
Gertrude grew a little sallower than usual as her black eyes fastened themselves on the girl before her who had hitherto seemed so ductile in her hands. It was not so much the incident itself that alarmed her as a certain new tone in Delia's voice.
"I thought we had agreed—that nothing—nothing—was to come before the Cause!" she said quietly, but insistently.
Delia's laugh was embarrassed.
"I never promised to desert Weston, Gertrude. I couldn't—any more than
I could desert you."
"We shall want every hand—every ounce of help that can be got—through January and February. You undertook to do some office work, to help in the organisation of the processions to Parliament, to speak at a number of meetings—"