"He was passing a few days there, when one morning early he signalled to an omnibus to stop. Two or three vehicles were in the way, so that when the driver was able to draw up toward the curbstone Regy stood back twenty feet or so. He came on growling and stood outside, berating the driver for not attending more promptly to his signal.
"I'll have you dismissed, you rascal,' he shouted, his arm upraised, when he happened to notice the driver's face. It was drawn with pain. Regy jumped up on the box without another word, learned that the driver's wife lay dying at home, dismissed him at once, and drove the omnibus himself all day. Then he found the house where the driver lived. The wife was dead and the children mourning over her cold body. Regy went to the office, got the driver off for a week, paid the funeral expenses, and then secured a place for the man on a farm, his oldest daughter keeping house.
"Those were exactly the facts, as I was told them by a gentleman from Richmond."
"It was just like him," said Marion, with a merry laugh. "I wonder what his motive is for disguising his real nature. Now, Doctor, warm as it is, I must go to see him."
It was, however, with a quickened beat of the pulse that, after her ring at the door-bell, she awaited admittance to the spacious, old fashioned house.
The servant was a man who had been in Mr. Lambert's employ for many years. He recognized Miss Howard, but was doubtful whether his master would see any one.
"Tell him I have just heard of his sickness and am very anxious to see him. Stay, wait a minute!" she cried, with a sudden resolve, "say that I want to tell him a piece of news personal to myself."
Even when she sat in the parlor she heard the loud growling of the master as the servant announced a guest.
It was several minutes before the man came back, with a troubled countenance, to say that Mr. Lambert would see her. "I told him he'd better not," he explained, "and that set him that he would. He's very, very bad to-day, miss; perhaps you'd better say nothing to cross him. I'll be close at hand if you want me."
For one instant her courage failed, then with an earnest lifting up of her heart to God for help she ascended the stairs and passed into the room.