“My word, no—he’s a—just a man who happens to have a little money and a lot of appreciation. He’s just helping me to success, and helping Peyton-Russell to a reputation as a collector—he is quite disinterested. He could be anything, that man. I don’t know why he isn’t. Something went wrong some place along his route, I guess, and he just got side-tracked, you understand.” He finished with a wave of his hand.
“Now I really must go—one must do a few things even before a short journey.”
Ruth was more anxious than ever to get away now, and neither Nels nor Dorothy made any great effort to keep her. Nels was looking at the roses with sad eyes and Dorothy was looking at him with eyes that made Ruth fear that the secret of the flowers would not be kept long. Dorothy was too generous and honest to want to keep up even so tiny a deception.
The one stupendous fact that stood out in her brain as she walked homeward was that Gloria and Professor Pendragon would meet. What would they do? Would Pendragon leave or would Gloria come back to town? What would they say to each other? How amazing that Mr. Peyton-Russell should be a friend of Pendragon’s and that Angela should be a friend of Gloria’s and that they had never before all met. Still it was understandable. Angela had only been married a year. George would be there, too, and Prince Aglipogue.
She thought of Pendragon’s tall, clean-cut figure and fine face, and of Aglipogue’s heavy countenance and elephantine form—the contrast. Surely Gloria would see and withdraw before too late. It would be, too, the time of test—the dark of the moon.
CHAPTER XII
It had been planned that they would all take the morning train together for North Adams, Gloria and Ruth, Terry and Prince Aglipogue and George, but Gloria, despite her motion picture experience, proved unequal to the early rising.
“It’s no use,” she explained to Ruth, who went to her room to wake her. “I simply can’t get up this early in the morning. You go on and meet Aggie and Terry at the station and tell them that I’m coming up on the sleeper tonight. Tell George to go along, too, just as he planned. He’s got his ticket and will take care of your luggage and the others’, and everything will go just as we planned it except that I’ll show up tomorrow morning.”
“Suppose there isn’t any sleeping train?”
“There will be; anyway as far as Pittsfield. Do go down and tell George and explain to Angela when you get there.”