When Lillian came, I mutely showed her the note. She studied it carefully, frowning as she did so.
"Pleasant creature!" she commented at last. "But I shouldn't put too much dependence on this, Madge. She may be with him, of course. But you ought to know that truth is a mere detail with Grace Draper. She would just as soon have sent this to you if she had not seen him for weeks, and knew no more of his address than you."
"But this is postmarked San Francisco," I said faintly.
Lillian laughed shortly. "My dear little innocent!" she said, "it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to send this envelope enclosed in one to some friend in San Francisco, who would re-direct it for her."
"I never thought of that," I said, flushing. "But, oh! Lillian, if he did not go away with her, what possible explanation is there of his leaving like this?"
"Yes, I know, dear," she returned. "It's a mystery, and one in the solving of which I seem perfectly helpless. I do wish someone would drop from the sky to help us."
XLII
DAYS THAT CREEP SLOWLY BY
It was not from the sky, however, but from across the ocean that the help Lillian had longed for in solving the mystery of Dicky's abandonment of me, finally came. It was less than a week after the receipt of Grace Draper's message, that Lillian and I, sitting in her wonderful white and scarlet living room, one evening after little Marion had gone to bed, heard Betty ushering in callers.
"Betty must know them or she wouldn't bring them in unannounced," Lillian murmured, as she rose to her feet, and then the next moment there was framed in the doorway the tall figure of Dr. Pettit. And with him, wonder of wonders! the slight form, the beautiful, wistful, tired face of Katharine Sonnot, whose ambition to go to France as a nurse I had been able to further.