Whenever she had time to think, she was overwhelmed by the weight of her solitude. Mr. Langhope was in Egypt, accessible only through a London banker—Mrs. Ansell presumably wandering on the continent. Her cables might not reach them for days. And among the throng of Lynbrook habitués, she knew not to whom to turn. To loose the Telfer tribe and Mrs. Carbury upon that stricken house—her thought revolted from it, and she was thankful to know that February had dispersed their migratory flock to southern shores. But if only Amherst would come!
Cicely and the tranquillized governess had been despatched on a walk with the dogs, and Justine was returning upstairs when she met one of the servants with a telegram. She tore it open with a great throb of relief. It was her own message to Amherst—address unknown....
Had she misdirected it, then? In that first blinding moment her mind might so easily have failed her. But no—there was the name of the town before her...Millfield, Georgia...the same name as in his letter.... She had made no mistake, but he was gone! Gone—and without leaving an address.... For a moment her tired mind refused to work; then she roused herself, ran down the stairs again, and rang up the telegraph-office. The thing to do, of course, was to telegraph to the owner of the mills—of whose very name she was ignorant!—enquiring where Amherst was, and asking him to forward the message. Precious hours must be lost meanwhile—but, after all, they were waiting for no one upstairs.
The verdict had been pronounced: dislocation and fracture of the fourth vertebra, with consequent injury to the spinal cord. Dr. Garford and Wyant came out alone to tell her. The surgeon ran over the technical details, her brain instantly at attention as he developed his diagnosis and issued his orders. She asked no questions as to the future—she knew it was impossible to tell. But there were no immediate signs of a fatal ending: the patient had rallied well, and the general conditions were not unfavourable.
"You have heard from Mr. Amherst?" Dr. Garford concluded.
"Not yet...he may be travelling," Justine faltered, unwilling to say that her telegram had been returned. As she spoke there was a tap on the door, and a folded paper was handed in—a telegram telephoned from the village.
"Amherst gone South America to study possibilities cotton growing have cabled our correspondent Buenos Ayres."
Concealment was no longer possible. Justine handed the message to the surgeon.
"Ah—and there would be no chance of finding his address among Mrs. Amherst's papers?"