"She wasn't told I'm in, I hope? A nice thing for a well-regulated hotel if——"
"No, but she says it's important. She's Miss O'Reilly."
Miss O'Reilly! The man of that name was perplexed. The only Miss O'Reilly who, as far as he knew, could possibly call on him, was the last woman he would have expected to do so. He had come to New York largely in the hope of seeing her. She had refused to see him.
"Tell her I'll be down in three minutes," he replied.
"She particularly doesn't want you to come down. She says she has some private news for you, and asks if you'll see her in your own sitting-room."
"All right," he tried to answer calmly. "Have the lady shown up."
He rushed back into his bedroom to wrestle once more with the tie. He must be ready to receive Miss O'Reilly at the door, and his waistcoat and coat were yet to put on. But it could be managed. The suite was on the fifteenth floor, and a full minute's walk from the lift for an old person like Miss O'Reilly. Bungling everything in his haste, he tried to think what it might mean. It looked as if she must have changed her mind, and be ready to sell him her house, the dear old house on which he had set his heart. Perhaps she would demand a higher price than he had offered. Well, he must pay it somehow. Heron would lend him the money—but no, there were reasons why O'Reilly didn't wish to accept favours from Heron, often as they had been pressed upon him. As he slipped into his coat, he heard the expected rap at his sitting-room door, and hurried to open it. A page-boy, acting as guide, had run ahead of the lady, to knock.
"Miss O'Reilly to see Mr. O'Reilly," he announced, with Irish relish of the Irish name. Then he erased himself. O'Reilly stood on the threshold, waiting for the right lady to appear, and meanwhile dodged back from the wrong one, a small, slim flapper in white, who for some reason had paused before his door. She stood quite still, and stared up at him unwinkingly, as a child stares.
"I beg your pardon," O'Reilly said, wanting to laugh. "May I pass? I must look for a lady who——"
"I'm the lady," the creature in white intervened. "That is, I am if you are Mr. O'Reilly."