"You are not going to keep Mr. Bromley at the camp, are you? He isn't able to work yet."
"Oh, no. You may send for him in the morning, if you wish. I—he was a little tired to-night, and I thought——"
"Yes; you have told me what you thought," she reminded him, half absently. And then, with a note of constraint in her voice that was quite new to him: "You are not obliged to go back to Elbow Canyon to-night, are you? Your room is always ready for you at Castle 'Cadia."
"Thank you; but I'll have to go back. If I don't, Bromley will think he's the whole thing and start in to run the camp in the morning before I could show up."
She rose when he did, but her face was averted and he could not see her eyes when he went on in a tone from which every emotion save that of mere friendly solicitude was carefully effaced: "May I go up and jolly Wingfield a bit? He'll think it odd if I go without looking in at him."
"If you should go without doing that for which you came," she corrected, with the same impersonal note in her voice. "Of course, you may see him: come with me."
She led the way up the grand stair and left him at the door of a room in the wing which commanded a view of the sky-pitched backgrounding mountains. The door was ajar, and when he knocked and pushed it open he saw that the playwright was in bed, and that he was alone.
"By Jove, now!" said a weak voice from the pillows; "this is neighbourly of you, Ballard. How the dickens did you manage to hear of it?"
"Bad news travels fast," said Ballard, drawing a chair to the bedside. He did not mean to go into details if he could help it; and to get away from them he asked how the miracle of recovery was progressing.
"Oh, I'm all right now," was the cheerful response—"coming alive at the rate of two nerves to the minute. And I wouldn't have missed it for the newest thousand-dollar bill that ever crackled in the palm of poverty. What few thrills I can't put into a description of electrocution, after this, won't be worth mentioning."