"Mrs. Reeves."
"See your friend, Mrs. Reeves, and tell her about Ogilvie. Tell her that he is looking for someone—a lady—to help with his work down in those mountains. Prepare her to accept his offer. I will telegraph him."
She looked at him blankly. "But—would it be true? I don't think I understand!"
He smiled reassuringly. "It would not be true that I am going to Europe to-morrow—but we could make it true! If we get her away from the city, and near Ogilvie, we can leave everything else to him. He's really a good deal of a man, you know."
Rosamund sprang to her feet. "Cecilia," she said, across the room, to her sister, "I am going back to Eleanor's."
III
In her enthusiasm at the chance of finding a way out for Eleanor, Rosamund seemingly forgot that it was Flood who helped her. As a matter of fact, she considered him so little that she was quite willing to make use of his assistance in so good a cause and then to ignore him. She had always found someone at hand to help her in anything she wanted to do; she could not remember a time when there was not someone ready and willing to gratify her least whim. It was only in her efforts on Eleanor's behalf that she was baffled for the first time, as much by Eleanor's own pride as by not knowing to whom to turn, or where help was to be found. It was a new experience for her to find that her money could do nothing; for it was precisely her money that her cherished Eleanor refused. If she was to do anything, it must be by some other means.
Flood was not as entirely unconscious of her attitude as he appeared. He had no intention of pressing himself upon her through making himself of use. He beheld her suffering in sympathy with this unknown friend of hers, and her suffering so worked upon his love for her that he would have done much more to lessen it. But he knew humanity; and while he took more pleasure in being generous than in any other of the powers his wealth had brought him, he gave without thought of benefits returned, save in the satisfaction of giving.
His first move was a letter to the mountain doctor.