"But we have every reason to hope! We must support him with our faith that he will come out of it!"
"I should never have permitted either of you to come to this place," said Isabel. "I shall always feel that it was my fault."
The obligation to cheer them raised his own spirits as he explained the nature of the Governor's injury while they sat on the hotel veranda. He described the fight at the barricade with reservations, mentioning not at all the fact that a man had died as the result. They understood as fully as he that the whole affair must be suffered to slip into oblivion as quickly as possible.
"The complications are so endless!" said Isabel with a sigh. "In that mass of mail you delivered last night I found a letter from Mrs. Congdon saying that she would arrive today—almost at once, in fact!"
"The prospect isn't wholly pleasing!" he exclaimed, looking at his watch. "I've played the very devil in the Congdons' affairs. I suppose I should lift my hat politely as she steps from the train and tell her that I'm the brute who attempted to make her a widow. She will of course recognize me instantly as the gentleman who escaped with her in a taxi after the kidnaping of her daughter."
"It seems to me," said Isabel soberly, "that from the very moment you and I unfolded our napkins on the tragic night of your sister's dinner the world has been upside down. If we should ever tell all that has happened, and how we have been whirled about and made to do things I'm sure we were never intended to do, there wouldn't be one sane person anywhere who'd believe it. I feel like crying all the time! And I'm not sure that I'm not responsible for all of it, every bit of it! Why, I may as well tell you now that I, poor, weak, foolish I, bade Putney Congdon take horse and ride gaily through the world, carving people with his stout sword! And I played the same trick on you!"
"Oh, he told me all about that!" laughed Archie, glad of something to relieve the tension. "He told me without shame that he had almost fallen in love with you as a distraction from his troubles. But I didn't confess that you had started me for the penitentiary. There's the train, and you must permit me to satisfy Mrs. Congdon that her husband is in a mood for immediate reconciliation before I break the news that he is here."
Mrs. Putney Congdon more than justified the impression he had formed of her in their encounter in Central Park by the manner in which she heard his story. He told it with all brevity on the station platform. First assuring her of Edith's safety, he made a clean breast of the Bailey Harbor visit, but skipped discreetly all that had occurred between that calamitous excursion and his meeting with her in New York.
It was so incredible that it was not until he described his journey to Huddleston in Putney's company that she was able to see any humor in the series of events that had led them all into the north.
"Poor dear Putney! And he doesn't know yet that you nearly killed him!"