It was apparent that he discarded the word that came to his tongue here and cast about for another; “interfered with,” was what he finally hit upon.  “Then he’s your aunt’s trustee and I believe that complicates the situation, though just how much I don’t know.  Rush didn’t get a letter from Martin this morning, did he?”

“I don’t know,” Mary said numbly.

“I thought perhaps,” he explained, “that might be the reason why you didn’t want to go to their house tonight.  Rush doesn’t quite understand Martin’s position nor do justice to it.  Martin wants to have a really thorough talk with him I know, as soon as possible.”

“Wallace ...”  Mary asked, after another silence, “what was the word you didn’t say when you spoke of father’s earning power being—­interfered with?  Was it—­cut off?  Do you mean that father isn’t—­ever going to be well?”

Startled as he was, he did not attempt a total denial; answered her, though with an effort, candidly.

“It’s not hopeless, at all,” he assured her.  “It really is not.  If he’ll rest, live an outdoor life for the next year or two, he has a good chance to become a well man again.  It’s probable that he will,—­practically so.  But if he attempts to take up his practise in the autumn it will simply be, so Darby declares, suicide.”

“That means tuberculosis, I suppose,” she said.

He nodded; then involuntarily he reached his hands out toward her, a gesture rare with him and eloquent equally of sympathy and consternation.  He hadn’t in the least meant to tell her all that—­nor indeed any of it.  Her hands met his with a warm momentary pressure and then withdrew.  He had, for a fact, pretty well forgotten where they were.

“If you knew,” she said, “how kind you’ve been not to try to—­spare me.  No, don’t bother.  I’m not going to cry.  Just give me a minute...”

It was less than that before she asked, in a tone reassuringly steady, “Does father know, himself?”

“He’s been warned, but he’s skeptical.  Steinmetz says there’s nothing surprising about that.  It’s his all but universal experience with men of his own profession.  Of course this summer out at Hickory Hill is so much to the good.  And if he can get sufficiently interested to stay there the year round, why, there’s no knowing.  The investment in that farm may prove the wisest one he ever made.”

“If it were only possible,”—­she was quoting what her father had said to her the other night at Ravinia,—­“for him to be whole-heartedly there!  And he could be—­for it’s a place one can’t help loving and he and Rush are wonderful companions—­he could be whole-heartedly there if it weren’t for Paula.”

It was precisely at this point, he indicated to her, that Paula could come in by relieving him of the necessity of getting back into practise.  Martin would look out for the fixed indebtedness on the farm.  He would probably be willing, in case John made it his home and put his own mature judgment at the disposal of the two young partners, to finance still further increases in the investment.  But for the ordinary expenses of living during the next year or two, Paula should cease being a burden and become a support.  “Do you think,” he finished by asking, “that she has any idea what the situation really is?”