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RV 311 "Exhibit, dear! What are you doing here?"

"Coming to inquire for poor Mrs. Bruss. I heard from Amalasuntha"

"That's kind of you. Maisie'll be so pleased."

She gave him the surgeon's report, saw that his card was entrusted to the right hands, and turned back into the street with him. He looked better than when he had left for the south; his leg was less stiff, and he carried his tall carefully dressed figure with a rigid jauntiness. But his face seemed sharper yet higher in colour. Fever or cocktails? She wondered. It was lucky that their meeting would save her going to the other end of the town to see him.

"Just like you, Exhibit, to remember poor Maisie"

He raised ironic eyebrows. "Is inquiring about ill people obsolete? I see you still keep up the tradition."

"Oh, I've been seeing it through with Maisie. Some one had to."

"Exactly. And your mother held aloof, but financed the whole business?"

"Splendidly. She always does."

He frowned, and stood hesitating, and tapping his long boot-tip with his stick. "I rather want to have a talk with your mother."

"With mother?" Nona was on the point of saying: "She's in town today—" then, remembering Pauline's crowded list, she checked the impulse.