The dream came back to Marise—the dream where Garth and the stenographer had been whispering together in a room where Marise could not see them.
"I believe he's with her now," the girl thought. "I believe when he went out this morning he went straight to her. He's told her to do something, and she intends to do it."
To that question, "Are you going West?" Zélie had hesitatingly responded, "Ye-es." What did it mean?
CHAPTER XXIV
ACCORDING TO MUMS
That same afternoon, Mary Sorel began a letter to Severance, a letter embroidered with points of admiration, dashes, underlinings, and parentheses.
"Dear Tony," she wrote, for she felt the warm affection of an Egeria, mingled with that of a mother-in-law elect, for him: and it pleased all that was snobbish in her soul to have this intimate feeling for an earl.
"Dear Tony, I shall be cabling you about the time you land, according to promise. But I promised as well to write a sort of diary letter, giving you all the developments day by day, and posting the document at the end of the week. Well, this is the first instalment, written—as you'll see by the date—on the day of your sailing.
"How I wish I had better news to give you! But don't be alarmed. Things are not going as we hoped, yet they might be worse. And now you are prepared by that preface, I'll try to tell you exactly the state of affairs!