"We are exceedingly particular about whom we admit," conceded Miss Elliott, with modest gratification.
"Oh, I am aware of that, and of your distinguished patronesses. The name of the lady whom you are at present entertaining is alone a sufficient guarantee. Oh, don't be afraid that I am going to put an item about her in the paper! A newspaper man respects confidences, and I understand that she does not wish her presence here to be heralded abroad. In fact, I may say that professionally I am quite ignorant as to her presence here, but personally and privately,--you understand,--" And he smiled intelligently.
Miss Elliott bowed. "Mrs. Woods Broughton is an old personal friend," she said simply. "She used to live in Waynscott, you know, before her marriage. There are so many people here who used to know her that she would have no chance for a quiet rest if it became known that she was here, and she is very much in need of a quiet rest."
Lyon looked sympathetic. "Yes, a nervous shock I understand from Dr. Barry. I hope she is improving."
"I think she is in better spirits than when she came, though any nervous disturbance is hard to understand."
"Will she remain after the school reopens?"
"Necessarily, for awhile. She is not in condition to travel."
Lyon left the building in so abstracted a state of mind that he fairly ran into a man on the sidewalk. With a hastily muttered apology, he hurried on. The discovery that the mysterious woman was Mrs. Woods Broughton was, in a way, staggering. As well connect any other national celebrity with small local affairs. Mrs. Woods Broughton's name was known throughout the country, not only because of her husband's wealth and position, but because of the more or less romantic circumstances attending her marriage. She had been Mrs. Vanderburg when Broughton met her and fell in love with her, and everybody knew that the divorce which she had procured shortly afterwards had been merely a preliminary to the brilliant wedding which had set the newspapers agog. It had been a very decorous and unsensational divorce, without a breath of scandal, for Vanderburg had been an unknown quantity for so many years that no exception could be taken to the deserted wife's action in securing legal recognition of her practical and actual independence. Still, the need of securing a divorce might never have occurred to her if Woods Broughton had not come into her life. Lyon remembered the story in its general outline, though he had forgotten that the scene of it was Waynscott. The papers had been featuring the wedding at the time he began his career as a reporter in Cleveland, and the whole affair had taken on a special and personal interest to him from the fact that about six weeks later he had himself met the divorced husband, Vanderburg, under dramatic circumstances. He had been traveling a long afternoon in Ohio, and had struck up a traveling acquaintance with a clever, cynical, world-worn man in the smoking car. Percy Lyon's experiences at that time had been somewhat limited, and he had never before encountered the particular variety of liveliness which this sophisticated traveler afforded. He had apparently been in all quarters of the globe, and if his tales had something of a Munchausen quality, they were none the less entertaining for that. The interruption of his last tale had been tragic. There had been a sudden grinding of the wheels on the rails, a tearing crash, and then confusion, horrible and soul-shaking. When Lyon began to think consecutively again, he found that he was frantically tugging at the crushed seat which was pinning his companion to the floor of the overturned car. Help answered promptly to his shout, and they soon had the man out, but he was unconscious and so badly hurt that the physician shook his head gravely.
"Better telegraph for his friends, if you can find out who they are."
Lyon, in the absence of any closer acquaintance, had searched the unconscious man's pockets for a clue to his identity, and in an inner pocket he found an old note-book with the name "William H. Vanderburg" written on the fly-leaf. The name had suggested nothing to his mind at the moment, and while he was looking further for an address, the man's eyes had opened slowly and taken the situation in with full intelligence.