“When will he be back?”
“He said that he should not return to-night; further than that we do not know.”
“Oh, why did you not have me called? Why did you not detain him and send for me?” demanded Roland, in the tone of a deeply injured individual.
“My dear fellow, I did not happen to see the colonel, or hear of him, until after he was gone. The head waiter had charge of him, and gave the message he left for the house,” mildly pleaded the bartender.
“Oh-h-h! what a disappointment!” cried Roland, leaving the bar to go in search of the head waiter.
He found that functionary in the public dining room, and questioned him closely in regard to the movements of Col. Anglesea; but the head waiter could only repeat the message left with him by the colonel; and this, of course, threw no new light on the subject.
Roland went out and questioned the hostler, but the latter knew even less than the others about the missing guest.
Finally Roland, in spite of his disappointment and anxiety, feeling the keen hunger of a healthy youth, went in and sat down and ate a very hearty breakfast.
Then he paid his bill and left the Calvert, leaving every one, from the host to “boots,” wondering what on earth the young man could have wanted with the colonel, to have kept him waiting all night for him.
But, finally, some one remembered that Mr. Roland Bayard was mate of the ship which had brought the colonel’s forsaken wife—his first wife, as they called her—from California to Maryland, and that the same Mr. Roland Bayard had escorted the lady to the neighborhood, and had even introduced her to his own aunt, the good Miss Sibby Bayard, who had entertained the stranger without knowing who she really was, or what the nature of her business in the neighborhood might be.