"Is Mr. Brice still downstairs?" interrupted Claire, her eyes straying involuntarily toward the door of the room.
"No. He had to go. He left his good-byes for you. His work here is done. And he has to start for Washington on the 2 A.M. train from Miami. By the way, the best part of it all is that he says a fugitive from justice can't bring legal proceedings in a civil court. So Rodney can never foreclose on us or take up those notes of mine. Lord, but that chap, Brice, is a wonder!"
Vital as was the news about the notes and the mortgage, Claire scarce heard it. In, her ears, and through the brain and heart of her, rang drearily the words:
"He had to go. He left his good-byes for you. His work here is done."
His work was done! Yes. But was that to be all? Had the light in his eyes and the vibrant tremor in his voice as he talked with her—had these been part of his "work," too? Was it all to end, like this,—and before it had begun?
To her own surprise and to her brother's greater astonishment, the usually self-contained Claire Standish burst into a tempest of weeping.
"Poor, poor little girl!" soothed Milo. "It's all been too much for you! No one could have stood up under such a strain. I'll tell you what we're going to do: We're going to Miami, for a week or two, and have a jolly time and make you try to forget all this mystery and excitement. We'll go to-morrow morning, if you say so."
The Miami season was at its climax. The half-moon driveway outside the front entrance to the Royal Palm Hotel was crowded thick with waiting motor cars, whose occupants were at the hotel's semi-weekly dance. On the brightlit front veranda men in white and in dinner-clothes and women in every hue of evening dress were passing to and fro. Elderly folk, sitting in deep porch chairs, watched through the long windows the gayly-moving dancers in the ballroom. Out through wide-open doors and windows pulsed the rhythmic music.
Above hung the great white stars in the blue-black Southern skies. The bay stretched glimmering and phosphorescent away from the palm-girt hotel gardens. The trade-winds set the myriad dry palm-fronds to rustling like the downpour of summer rain.
Up the steps from the gardens drifted promenaders and dancers, in groups or in twos and threes. Then, up the stairway moved a slender, white-clad figure, alone.