“Then,” said Mr Cheviott, “the faster we get back to Hathercourt the better. You would like to be there before Brandreth arrives?”
“Very much,” said Mary.
“Will not your mother have been very uneasy about you?” he added.
“I hope not. I think not,” said Mary, anxiously. “She may have been too absorbed about papa to think of me. And she knows the difficulty. Very likely she thought I was waiting at the Edge till Wills came back again. But, Mr Cheviott, you are not meaning to take me home all the way?”
“What else, what less could I possibly do?” he replied, bluntly.
“Will not your sister be dreadfully uneasy at your being so late?” she asked.
“No, she does not expect me to-night at all—at least, I left it uncertain,” Mr Cheviott replied. “I have been hunting over near Farkingham to-day. It is nearly the last meet of the season, and Alys begged me not to miss it. Then I dined at Cleavelands, half intending to sleep there. But I found there was going to be a dance after dinner, and—somehow I don’t care for that sort of thing, especially without Alys. So I came away.”
No one certainly could have to-night accused Mr Cheviott of stiffness or uncommunicativeness.
“How is Alys?” asked Mary.
“Better, on the whole, better, but it is slow work,” said Mr Cheviott, with a little sigh. A sigh partly of brotherly anxiety, partly of regret for the additional complications this accident of his sister’s had brought into his own and others’ lives. “It may be years before she is thoroughly well again,” he added, and Mary, feeling that there was little she could say in the way of comfort, was silent.