“And it was Betty? That woman! May she never have to bear what we have borne!”
Murchison was sitting with his elbows on his knees, his chin upon his fists.
“Well—they know the worst—at last,” he said, grimly. “We can clear for action. That’s a grand man, Kate. I shall stay and fight—fight as he would were he in my place.”
She stretched out a hand and let it rest upon his shoulder.
“You are what I would have you be, brave. Our chance will come.”
“God grant it.”
“You shall show these people what manner of man you are.”
CHAPTER XXXV
Dr. Little descended the stairs of Major Murray’s house with the alert and rather furtive look of a man who has been for days subjected to the semi-sceptical questions of interested relatives. Parker Steel had attended at the introduction of a third Miss Murray into the world; the whole affair had seemed but the ordinary yearly incident in the great, rambling, florid-faced house, whose windows appeared to have copied its owner’s military stare. It was during Dr. Little’s regency that Major Murray’s wife had developed certain sinister symptoms that had worried the locum-tenens very seriously. Concern for his own self-conceit rather than concern for the patient, characterized Dr. Little’s attitude towards the case. The professional spirit when cultivated to the uttermost end of complexity, becomes an impersonation of the intellectual ego.
A thin, acute-faced woman with sandy hair appeared at the dining-room door as Dr. Little reached the hall. This lady with the sandy hair and freckles happened to be the most inquisitive, suspicious, and unrebuffable of sisters that Dr. Little had ever encountered on guard over her brother’s domestic happiness.