“No. There was an inquest—but no one arrested, at least before I left.” She was twisting her handkerchief into shreds between her fingers. “Thank you,” she said, suddenly, trying to smile again. “It was kind of you to tell me. You have been so good to me! Now—now, please go!”
Elliott fled from the hotel, immeasurably relieved that it was over. The next day, he said to himself, he would send her back to her aunt in Nebraska, where she would probably wish to go, and he himself would sail with Bennett for Africa. When he returned it would be with his share of the great treasure. He felt the need of it now; he wanted it more than ever—not for his own sake, but for Margaret’s.
Next morning, when he called on Margaret, she made no reference to her father. She was very pale and evidently dispirited, and he took her out driving. She attempted to talk on casual topics, but with indifferent success, and she did not speak of leaving San Francisco.
It was the same on the next day, and the next. Margaret no longer cared either to drive or to walk. She received Elliott in her sitting-room at the hotel when he came to see her. She was listless, languid, paler than ever. As she was, in a manner, his guest, he could not well suggest to her that she return to Lincoln, but he saw clearly that she would be ill unless she were given a change of scene, and something to divert her mind. San Francisco still was too suggestive of Hongkong, and he noticed that she shrunk painfully from the sight of a Chinaman. She must leave the city, he thought; but perhaps she did not have even enough money for her ticket to Lincoln.
After long pondering, he broached the matter on the fourth day.
“If you’d like to go back to your aunt at Lincoln, Margaret,” he said, “I know a fellow here in the Union Pacific office, and I can get you transportation without its costing you a cent.”
“Don’t you know?” she answered. “My aunt is dead. She died shortly after you left Lincoln. She was caught out in that storm that found us at Salt Lake—do you remember it?—and took cold, and died of pneumonia. I have no one in the world now. That was the chief reason why I went to Hongkong.”
“No, you never told me that,” said Elliott, startled, and worried. He would have liked to say what he felt that, under the circumstances, he had no right to say; he had trouble to restrain it; he wanted to relieve her at once from all her material troubles.
“And this brings me to what I should have said long ago,” she went on. “I am—it’s humiliating to confess it—but I have no money. All I had I spent in Hongkong. I want to get work here. I’m strong; I can do anything. Have you any idea where I could try?”
Elliott started with horror; the confession wrenched his heart. But it occurred to him that he could subsidize some one to take music lessons from her.