“You don’t tell me! I know the judge and his wife very well, indeed; and the children, too, though they were only children in my time. You say they are here, in the hotel?”
“Yes. Wait a minute and I’ll carry the word to them.”
He was gone only a short time, and when he returned to the lobby, the judge and Mrs. Follansbee came with him. He stood aside while the three were happily bridging the gap of the years, and at the first lull he broke in smoothly to say to Drew: “Mrs. Follansbee has been good enough to include me in a dinner party for this evening, and I have just told her that I am unexpectedly obliged to leave town, but I was quite sure you would be willing to substitute for me.”
“Of course you will, Stephen,” put in the lady patroness, surveying the stocky figure of the promoter through her lorgnette; then, with a sigh for the vanished years: “My, my; what a man you’ve grown to be! I should never have known you, with that clipped beard and the eyeglasses. Can’t you spare a few minutes to come up to our suite and see Eugenia and Lucy Ann? They both remember you.”
Bromley glanced at his watch and slipped away. He had promised to take Jean Dabney to luncheon, and there was barely time to reach Madame Marchande’s place in Sixteenth Street by the appointed noon hour. When he did reach the millinery shop he found Jean waiting on the sidewalk for him, and he took her to a new chop house lately opened in the block next to the St. James, steering clear of the subject that was uppermost in his mind until after they were seated in one of the box-like private stalls and their order had been given and served. Then he began without preface.
“I want to ask you something about Philip, Jean. He walked home with you a week ago last Monday evening, didn’t he?”
“Let me think,” she answered reflectively. “To-day is Saturday; yes, it was a week ago Monday.”
“Did he—did he act as though he was especially troubled about anything?”
“Why, no; not that I saw. I remember he scolded me a little because he seemed to think I wasn’t quite as savagely righteous as I ought to be. But he has done that lots of times. He walks so straight himself that he can’t bear to see anybody lean over, ever so little.”
Bromley winced. If Drew’s story were true—and there was no reason to doubt it—Philip was not walking straight now; he was grovelling. What would Jean say if she knew? He had not meant to tell her what he had just heard; did not yet mean to tell her. Still, she would have to know, some time. If he could only be sure that the knowledge wouldn’t smash her.... He would have to feel his way carefully.