prepared, was
their first, it seemed, since her visit to Hickory Hill and Rush had been
shocked at her wan, lifeless appearance. He'd guessed, of course, that
his friend's suit hadn't prospered and now took the line, which no doubt
seemed to him the most tactful and comforting one available, that she was
too ill to attempt any final decision on such a subject just now and
that things would look different when better health had driven morbid
thoughts away.

Her vehemence in trying to convince him that she had acted finally in the
matter, that Graham now acquiesced fully in her decision and no longer
wanted to marry her, and that Rush _must_ let him alone--not even try to
talk with him about it--had only made him the more confident in his
diagnosis.

It must have been pat in the middle of this scene that Graham's
midnight-written letter arrived. Rush's attitude toward his partner's
flight--after the first moments of mere incredulity--had been one of
contemptuous irritation, the natural attitude for any young man who sees
a comrade taking no more of a matter than a disappointment in love with
an evident lack of fortitude. This was heightened, too, by a rapidly
developed sense of personal grievance. What the devil did Graham think
was going to happen to him with Hickory Hill left on his hands like that?
There was more than enough work for the two of them. And then the
financial aspect of it! Mr. Stannard, who had just been brought to the
point of loosening up and letting them have a little more money, would of
course leave Rush to his fate. If he didn't call his loans and sell him
out! Ruin them altogether! Graham must simply be found and dragged back
before his father learned of his flight.

He couldn't have been paying his sister much attention while he ran on
like that! Unwisely, perhaps, but inevitably, Mary attempted to defend
the fugitive--in the only way she thought of as possible; namely, by
showing her brother what the true situation was.

She didn't try to tell March what she said. The thing which, with a
forlorn smile, she dwelt upon, was the terrified vehemence with which
Rush had stopped her at his first inkling of what she was trying to make
him see. She was simply out of her head. A bad case, he pronounced, of
neurasthenia. Her having set out yesterday to find a job should have made
that plain enough. What she needed was a nurse and a doctor--and he meant
to provide both within the next few hours. He then