No one had ever had a better brother than old Hilary.  His only fault was that he had always been too kind.  It was his kindness that had done for him, and made his married life a failure.  He had never asserted himself enough with that woman, his wife.  Stephen turned over on his other side.  ‘All this confounded business,’ he thought, ’comes from over-sympathising.  That’s what’s the matter with Thyme, too.’  Long he lay thus, while the light grew stronger, listening to Cecilia’s gentle breathing, disturbed to his very marrow by these thoughts.

The first post brought no letter from Thyme, and the announcement soon after, that Mr. Hilary had come to breakfast, was received by both Stephen and Cecilia with a welcome such as the anxious give to anything which shows promise of distracting them.

Stephen made haste down.  Hilary, with a very grave and harassed face, was in the dining-room.  It was he, however, who, after one look at Stephen, said: 

“What’s the matter, Stevie?”

Stephen took up the Standard.  In spite of his self-control, his hand shook a little.

“It’s a ridiculous business,” he said.  “That precious young Sanitist has so worked his confounded theories into Thyme that she has gone off to the Euston Road to put them into practice, of all things!”

At the half-concerned amusement on Hilary’s face his quick and rather narrow eyes glinted.

“It’s not exactly for you to laugh, Hilary,” he said.  “It’s all of a piece with your cursed sentimentality about those Hughs, and that girl.  I knew it would end in a mess.”

Hilary answered this unjust and unexpected outburst by a look, and Stephen, with the strange feeling of inferiority which would come to him in Hilary’s presence against his better judgment, lowered his own glance.

“My dear boy,” said Hilary, “if any bit of my character has crept into Thyme, I’m truly sorry.”

Stephen took his brother’s hand and gave it a good grip; and, Cecilia coming in, they all sat down.

Cecilia at once noted what Stephen in his preoccupation had not—­that Hilary had come to tell them something.  But she did not like to ask him what it was, though she knew that in the presence of their trouble Hilary was too delicate to obtrude his own.  She did not like, either, to talk of her trouble in the presence of his.  They all talked, therefore, of indifferent things—­what music they had heard, what plays they had seen—­eating but little, and drinking tea.  In the middle of a remark about the opera, Stephen, looking up, saw Martin himself standing in the doorway.  The young Sanitist looked pale, dusty, and dishevelled.  He advanced towards Cecilia, and said with his usual cool determination: 

“I’ve brought her back, Aunt Cis.”

At that moment, fraught with such relief, such pure joy, such desire to say a thousand things, Cecilia could only murmur:  “Oh, Martin!”