"I'll be up in a minute," I answered, and I had turned to follow the maid up the staircase, when a sharp ring at the telephone distracted my attention.
"Come down in five minutes if you can," said a voice. "You're wanted badly about the B. and R. deal."
"Is your mistress ill?" I enquired, turning from the telephone to take up my overcoat.
"I think not, sir," replied the woman, "she is dressing."
"Then tell her I'm called away, but I will see her at luncheon," I answered hurriedly, as I rushed out.
Upon reaching my office, I found that my presence was required in Washington before two o'clock, and as I had not time to return home, I telephoned Sally for my bag, which she sent down to the station by Micah, the coachman.
"I hope to return early to-morrow," I said to the negro from the platform, as the train pulled out.
In my anxiety over the possible collapse of the important B. and R. deal, the message that Sally had sent me that morning was crowded for several hours out of my thoughts. When I remembered it later in the afternoon, I sent her a telegram explaining my absence; and my conscience, which had troubled me for a moment, was appeased by this attention that would prove to her that even in the midst of my business worries I had not forgotten her. There was, indeed, I assured myself, no cause for the sudden throb of anxiety, almost of apprehension, I had felt at the recollection of the message that I had disregarded. She had looked stronger yesterday; I had commented at dinner on the fine flush in her cheeks; and the pain, which had caused me such sharp distress while it lasted, had vanished entirely for the last thirty-six hours. Then the sound of her voice, with its note of appeal, of helplessness, of terror, when she had called upon George at the reception, returned to me as if it were spoken audibly somewhere in my brain. I saw her eyes, wide and bright, as they had been when they looked straight beyond me in search of help, and her slender, swaying figure in its gown of a pale sea-foam shade that was stained from bosom to hem with the red streak of the wine. "Yet there is nothing to worry about," I thought, annoyed because I could not put this anxiety, this apprehension, out of my mind. "She is not ill. She is better. Only last night I heard her laughing as she has not done for weeks."
The afternoon was crowded with meetings, and it was three o'clock the next day when I reached home and asked eagerly for Sally as I went up the staircase. She had gone out, her maid informed me, but I would find a note she had left on my desk in the library. Turning hastily back, I took up the note from the silver blotter beneath which it was lying, and as I opened it, I saw that the address looked tremulous and uncertain, as if it had been written in haste or excitement.
"Dear Ben (it read), I have been in trouble, and as I do not wish to disturb you at this time, I am going away for a few days to think it over. I shall be at Riverview, the old place on James River where mamma and I used to stay—but go ahead with the South Midland, and don't worry about me, it is all right.