He seemed to see all the mysterious color of the coat and the shimmer of its folds—and the look in Eleanor’s face. “I hope you can get something like it for us,” he said inanely.
He had not gone back to inquire again.
They had his address; they were to send him word if they found anything. Mr. Stewart was to make a trip to the East very soon. She would send him word.
It was left at that. They would send him word.... He planned, in the back of his mind, to buy the coat for Eleanor but not to give it to her—not just yet. He would buy it, he thought, and put it away; and when William Archer arrived, he would bring it out and throw it about her shoulders. He liked to fancy her in it and to think how it would help her disappointment about Annabel.... She could enjoy it to the full. She would not be afraid of injuring Annabel or her morals—when William Archer was there.
But no word came and the months slipped by.
VIII
THEN, one evening, Richard More came home from the office and found a new look in his house. He knew it, even before he caught a glimpse of a nurse’s white cap hurrying through the lower hall and before the doctor met him at the foot of the stair.
“I am just going,” said the doctor.