“Oh, yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, that’s all right.”
“You saw Richard?”
“No. I sent him a note. He knows all about it by this time, if he has been home this morning. You’d better start, Wade. Send a messenger to our house for my bag. Tell him to bring it here and then take a note for me. You’d really better start—dear!”
“Cora!” he shouted, took her in his arms, and was gone. His departing gait down the corridor to the elevator seemed, from the sounds, to be a gallop.
Left alone, Cora wrote, sealed, and directed a note to Laura. In it she recounted what Pryor had told her of Corliss; begged Laura and her parents not to think her heartless in not preparing them for this abrupt marriage. She was in such a state of nervousness, she wrote, that explanations would have caused a breakdown. The marriage was a sensible one; she had long contemplated it as a possibility; and, after thinking it over thoroughly, she had decided it was the only thing to do. She sent her undying love.
She was sitting with this note in her hand when shuffling footsteps sounded in the corridor; either Wade’s cashier or the messenger, she supposed. The door-knob turned, a husky voice asking, “Want a drink?” as the door opened.
Cora was not surprised—she knew Vilas’s office was across the hall from that in which she waited—but she was frightened.
Ray stood blinking at her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, at last.