Presently he emerged from the bank, still carrying the bag. He was beaming. A certain worried, haggard expression had vanished from his face and for the first time in eight hours he treated his travelling wardrobe with scorn and indifference. He tossed it carelessly into the seat beside the chauffeur, and, springing nimbly into the car, sank back with a prodigious sigh of relief.
"Thank God, they're off my mind at last," he cried. "That is the first good, long breath I've had in a week. No, not now. It's a long story and I can't tell it in Fifth Avenue. It would be extremely annoying to have both of you die of heart failure with all these people looking on."
He felt her hand on his arm, and knew that she was looking at him with wide, incredulous eyes, but he faced straight ahead. After a moment or two, she snuggled back in the seat and cried out tremulously:
"Oh, how wonderful—how wonderful!"
Mrs. Courtney, in utter ignorance, inquired politely:
"Isn't it? Have you never been in New York before, Miss Cameron? Strangers always find it quite wonderful at the—"
"How are all the kiddies, Edith, and old Bill?" broke in her brother hastily.
He was terribly afraid that the girl beside him was preparing to shed tears of joy and relief. He could feel her searching in her jacket pocket for a handkerchief.
Mrs. Courtney was not only curious but apprehensive. She hadn't the faintest idea who Miss Cameron was, nor where her brother had picked her up. But she saw at a glance that she was lovely, and her soul was filled with strange misgivings. She was like all sisters who have pet bachelor brothers. She hoped that poor Tom hadn't gone and made a fool of himself. The few minutes' conversation she had had with the stranger only served to increase her alarm. Miss Cameron's voice and smile—and her eyes!—were positively alluring.
She had had a night letter from Tom that morning in which he said that he was bringing a young lady friend down from the north,—and would she meet them at the station and put her up for a couple of days? That was all she knew of the dazzling stranger up to the moment she saw her. Immediately after that, she knew, by intuition, a great deal more about her than Tom could have told in volumes of correspondence. She knew, also, that Tom was lost forever!