As for John Wollaston, he was very tired. Paula's volcanic moments always exhausted him. He never could derationalize his emotions, cut himself free; and while he felt just as intensely as she did, he had to carry the whole superstructure of himself along on those tempestuous voyages. In the mood Paula had left him in this morning, there was nothing in the world that could have satisfied and restored him as did his daughter's companionship. The peace of this wordless prolongation of their talk together was something he lacked, for a long while, the will to break.
It was not far short of noon when they came back into the veranda together. He had walked the last hundred yards, after a look at his watch, pretty fast and after a glance into both the down-stairs rooms, he called up-stairs to his wife in a voice that had an edge of sudden anxiety in it. Then getting no response, he went up, two at a time.
Mary dropped down, limp with a sudden premonition, upon the gloucester swing in the veranda. The maid of all work, who had heard his call, came from the kitchen just as he was returning down the stairs. Mrs. Wollaston had gone away, she said. Pete had reported with the big car at eleven o'clock and Paula, who apparently had been waiting for him, had driven off at once having left word that she would not be back for lunch.
"All right," John said curtly. "You may go."
He was so white when he rejoined Mary in the veranda that she sprang up with an involuntary cry and would have had him lie down, where she had been sitting. But the fine steely ring in his voice stopped her short.
"Have you any idea," he asked, "where she has gone or what she has gone to do? She came down," he went on without waiting for her answer,—"and looked for me. Waited for me. And thanks to that—walk we took, I wasn't here. Well, can you guess what she's done?"
"It's only a guess," Mary said, "but she may have gone to see
Martin Whitney."
"Martin Whitney?" he echoed blankly. "What for? What does she want of him?"
"She spoke of him," Mary said, "in connection with the money, the twenty thousand dollars…"
He broke in upon her again with a mere blank frantic echo of her words and once more Mary steadied herself to explain.