In spite of the fact that it was still broad daylight, and a crowded thoroughfare, Frank Earl stopped and gave her hand a cordial grip that made her wince. "You're all right," he said. "You're all right. Now let's go and have dinner."
"Are you not going to the Ramseys'?" she asked, evidently taking it for granted that the family would wish to be together at such a time.
"Oh, no," he answered. "Hilda will go straight to bed, poor girl; and Ramsey will sit beside her and dab cologne on her forehead, and after a while he'll coax her to eat a cracker and drink some tea, and he'll have his dinner right there beside her. You don't know the turtle-doves. I don't hanker for my own society to-night, but I shall have to put up with it unless you take pity on me."
"I can't, Frank," she answered. "I simply can't eat when my mind is so upset; I'm going straight home."
"And make your supper on crackers and tea, I suppose," he said disgustedly. "Well, in that case, I'll go for a tramp and try to get rid of the cobwebs in my brain, and the stuffy air of that courtroom. I always feel as if twenty centuries of alleged justice, injustice and malpractice looked down upon me when I get into court; that's one reason why I'm no good as a trial lawyer. Here, isn't this your street?"
"Yes, no—I don't live where I did any more just now," she answered lucidly. He stopped and looked at her and smiled in spite of every everything. "I've sent in my copy, and you can walk up with me, if you want to."
They walked on in silence; Frank was evidently thinking deeply, and Carroll was following some weary round of conjecture for the thousandth time when she stopped at her number. Frank looked at it and then at her, startled out of his usual debonair manner for once.
"Why—it is——"
"Yes," she answered. "I've been living here for some time, but that wasn't for publication, so I kept my other room, and had my mail go there as usual. Silvia desired it."
"She hasn't left any stone unturned," he said musingly. "I wonder what was in that letter!"