Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/77

 "Mother! I've got to tell her now! Mother—she's not weak. She'll never forgive me, if I don't let her know in time to reach the hospital—soon."

"That's right, dear Marjorie! That's right!" Billy approved, sympathetically, patting her. "You ought to have your mother now!"

"I'd no idea father was hurt anything like this," Marjorie continued, staring up at Billy and then at Gregg, "when the call came as it did. Just to Doctor Grantham, I mean. You see, if father was hurt anything like this, I'd have thought anybody would have called home, too; right away."

"Probably it didn't seem so serious, at first," Gregg suggested.

"No; probably not. I didn't ask Mr. Russell. I didn't ask him at all." She turned about.

"Where is Mr. Russell?" Billy demanded.

Gregg moved nearer Marjorie; he could feel the flimsy defense, which he had tried to build about her, beginning already to fall to pieces. He had not thought of Billy knowing Grantham's assistant; now it was plain that Billy did.

"I don't know," Gregg said, as evenly as he could.

"Where's Mrs. Russell?" Billy demanded.

Yet he suspected nothing; Billy merely meant to take upon himself the direction of affairs here which, he felt, Gregg had been bungling.

"In her room, I suppose," Gregg said; for she had disappeared; and Gregg was thankful for that. "It was a frightful shock to her, of course, to have this happen here; she's done up. Probably her husband is with her—if he hasn't gone out for something."

For now Gregg considered that, though he had said that Russell had been in the flat, he had not said that