She shrank from her, shielding herself behind Michael's shoulder.

"No, Michael, no!" she repeated. "I'm going to be taken away from you.

And look, Miss--ah, my dear, I have forgotten your name--look, she has got no hat on. She was going to stop with me a long time. Michael, must I go?"

Michael saw the nurse looking at her, watching her with that quiet eye of the trained attendant.

Then she spoke to Michael.

"Well, if Lord Comber will just step outside with me," she said, "we'll see if we can arrange for you to stop a little longer."

"And you'll come back, Michael," said she.

Michael saw that the nurse wanted to say something to him, and with infinite gentleness disentangled the clinging of Lady Ashbridge's hand.

"Why, of course I will," he said. "And won't you give Miss Falbe another cup of tea?"

Lady Ashbridge hesitated a moment.

"Yes, I'll do that," she said. "And by the time I've done that you will be back again, won't you?"

Michael followed the nurse from the room, who closed the door without shutting it.

"There's something I don't like about her this evening," she said. "All day I have been rather anxious. She must be watched very carefully. Now I want you to get her to come upstairs, and I'll try to make her go to bed."

Michael felt his mouth go suddenly dry.

"What do you expect?" he said.

"I don't expect anything, but we must be prepared. A change comes very quickly."

Michael nodded, and they went back together.

"Now, mother darling," he said, "up you go with Nurse Baker. You've been out all day, and you must have a good rest before dinner. Shall I come up and see you soon?"

A curious, sly look came into Lady Ashbridge's face.

"Yes, but where am I going to?" she said. "How do I know Nurse Baker will take me to my own room?"

"Because I promise you she will," said Michael.

That instantly rea.s.sured her. Mood after mood, as Michael saw, were pa.s.sing like shadows over her mind.

"Ah, that's enough!" she said. "Good-bye, Miss--there! the name's gone again! But won't you sit here and have a talk to Michael, and let him show you over the house to see if you like it against the time--Oh, Michael said I mustn't worry you about that. And won't you stop and have dinner with us, and afterwards we can sing."

Michael put his arm around her.

"We'll talk about that while you're resting," he said. "Don't keep Nurse Baker waiting any longer, mother."

She nodded and smiled.

"No, no; mustn't keep anybody waiting," she said. "Your father taught me to be punctual."

When they had left the room together, Sylvia turned to Michael.

"Michael, my dear," she said, "I think you are--well, I think you are Michael."

She saw that at the moment he was not thinking of her at all, and her heart honoured him for that.

"I'm anxious about my mother to-night," he said. "She has been so--I suppose you must call it--well all day, but the nurse isn't easy about her."

Suddenly all his fears and his fatigue and his trouble looked out of his eyes.

"I'm frightened," he said, "and it's so unutterably feeble of me. And I'm tired: you don't know how tired, and try as I may I feel that all the time it is no use. My mother is slipping, slipping away."

"But, my dear, no wonder you are tired," she said. "Michael, can't anybody help? It isn't right you should do everything."

He shook his head, smiling.

"They can't help," he said. "I'm the only person who can help her. And I--"

He stood up, bracing mind and body.

"And I'm so brutally proud of it," he said. "She wants me. Well, that's a lot for a son to be able to say. Sylvia, I would give anything to keep her."

Still he was not thinking of her, and knowing that, she came close to him and put her arm in his. She longed to give him some feeling of comradeship. She could be sisterly to him over this without suggesting to him what she could not be to him. Her instinct had divined right, and she felt the answering pressure of his elbow that acknowledged her sympathy, welcomed it, and thought no more about it.

"You are giving everything to keep her," she said. "You are giving yourself. What further gift is there, Michael?"

He kept her arm close pressed by him, and she knew by the frankness of that holding caress he was thinking of her still either not at all, or, she hoped, as a comrade who could perhaps be of a.s.sistance to courage and clear-sightedness in difficult hours. She wanted to be no more than that to him just now; it was the most she could do for him, but with a desire, the most acute she had ever felt for him, she wanted him to accept that--to take her comradeship as he would have surely taken her brother's. Once, in the last intimate moments they had had together, he had refused to accept that att.i.tude from her--had felt it a relationship altogether impossible. She had seen his point of view, and recognised the justice of the embarra.s.sment. Now, very simply but very eagerly, she hoped, as with some tugging strain, that he would not reject it. She knew she had missed this brother, who had refused to be brother to her.

But he had been about his own business, and he had been doing his own business, with a quiet splendour that drew her eyes to him, and as they stood there, thus linked, she wondered if her heart was following. . . .

She had seen, last December, how reasonable it was of him to refuse this domestic sort of intimacy with her; now, she found herself intensely longing that he would not persist in his refusal.

Suddenly Michael awoke to the fact of her presence, and abruptly he moved away from her.

"Thanks, Sylvia," he said. "I know I have your--your good wishes.

But--well, I am sure you understand."

She understood perfectly well. And the understanding of it cut her to the quick.

"Have you got any right to behave like that to me, Michael?" she asked.

"What have I done that you should treat me quite like that?"

He looked at her, completely recalled in mind to her alone. All the hopes and desires of the autumn smote him with encompa.s.sing blows.

"Yes, every right," he said. "I wasn't heeding you. I only thought of my mother, and the fact that there was a very dear friend by me. And then I came to myself: I remembered who the friend was."

They stood there in silence, apart, for a moment. Then Michael came closer. The desire for human sympathy, and that the sympathy he most longed for, gripped him again.

"I'm a brute," he said. "It was awfully nice of you to--to offer me that. I accept it so gladly. I'm wretchedly anxious."