"Tell my valet to pack up at once. I'm leaving for New York to-night."
"Yes, sir. Very good, sir," closing a responsive palm. "Thank you, sir."
CHAPTER III
INTRODUCING MARTHA FARNUM
In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of any famous health resort, strangely contrasting types are often found. Amid the vain, the foolish, the inebriates and the idle who flocked to the Springs for amusement and diversion, there were a few who really came to seek health. For three months, the gay passers-by on the shaded walks near the hotel had noticed one such, an elderly lady, feeble, gray-haired, evidently recovering from a severe illness, who invariably occupied a wheel-chair, the motive power for which was furnished by a most attractive young girl always clad in simple black. The girl was about nineteen, slender, graceful, with the clear and partly sunburnt complexion which comes from life spent much in the open air. Her eyes and hair were brown—her eyes large and wistful, her hair light and wavy. She wore no jewelry, and there was no suggestion of color about her costume. Yet there seemed a certain lightness and gayety in her face which conveyed the impression that sadness was not a component factor in her life. She smiled as, hour after hour, she read to the invalid on the veranda, and seemed actually to enjoy her task of wheeling the chair back and forth to the Springs in the rear of the hotel.
Once, when a traveling man who had strayed down to the Springs for a weekend offered the front clerk a cheap cigar and expressed curiosity as to the name of the young lady, that obliging encyclopedia explained:
"Oh, that's Miss Farnum. She's old Mrs. Kilpatrick's companion. No, not a nurse—sort of poor relative, I guess."
