Dr. Crossett left them after the first few days to keep some important engagement in the West, but before he left he had insisted upon advancing Dr. Barnhelm a sum of money sufficient for his needs, enough to allow him freedom to complete his experiments and prepare the elaborate models necessary for a demonstration before the Medical Society.
At first Dr. Barnhelm had refused to accept the favor, but Lola, greatly to his surprise, had sided against him, and more to please her than for any other reason he had taken the money on the understanding that it was to be repaid out of the first profits of his invention. At the time there seemed little reason to doubt his ability to repay his friend. Fame and success mean much to a physician’s income, and after the proof he had so lately had how could he consider anything but success possible? He gave up his practice, excepting only a few of his old charity patients, and turning the borrowed money over to Lola, who had for a long time been in the habit of controlling the family purse, he buried himself in his work.
For over two months Dr. Crossett travelled, first to Chicago, then to Denver, and from there to San Francisco. Everywhere he was received with the honors due to a man of his high standing in the medical world, and allowed full opportunity to compare the treatment of nervous disorders with the methods of the best physicians of his own country. He had come as the representative of the French society, of which he was president, and it was his object to gather enough information to aid him in the writing of a book upon this subject. He heard once from Dr. Barnhelm, notifying him of a change in their address from upper Eighth Avenue to an apartment on Riverside Drive. No explanation for the change was offered, the rest of the letter being a long account of the progress of his work and a few words about Lola, that she had quite recovered her health and seemed to be in unusually high spirits.
For some weeks after this he had been travelling almost constantly, but on his return to Chicago he found a short note waiting for him at his hotel. In this note Dr. Barnhelm simply stated that he was in trouble and anxious to see him. That it was nothing that need cause him to cut short his stay in the West, but that the matter was a delicate one, and that he was anxious to see him immediately upon his return.
Dr. Crossett was rather alarmed by the whole tone of his old friend’s letter. Of Lola there was no mention, but he could not free himself of a vague suspicion that she must be the cause of her father’s evidently deeply troubled mind, and he brought his business affairs to an abrupt end and caught the next fast train to New York.
It had been Spring when Dr. Crossett landed in America; it was now Summer, and, as his taxi ran smoothly up Fifth Avenue to the Park, the boarded-up fronts of the houses suggested to him a plan for forcing a brief extension of his vacation and spending a week or two with Lola and her father at some of the famous American watering-places of which he had often heard. His own splendid health and superb vitality he owed, in part, to his habit of allowing himself frequent intervals of mental rest and outdoor exercise, and as he thought of how Lola would be benefited by a change from the hot, stale air of the city to some beautiful seashore or mountain resort, he smiled to himself happily.
The cab stopped, and as he got out and turned to pay the driver he noticed with surprised approval the unbroken row of stately apartment houses facing the green of Riverside Park and the wide expanse of the Hudson. His old friend was growing wise he thought to himself; here at least were grass, and trees, and fresh air.
Maria admitted him, and showing him through a wide foyer-hall into a pretty and well-furnished parlor, turned to leave him, but he called her back anxiously.
“Miss Lola! Tell me, Maria?”
There was just a trace of hesitation as she answered.