Whitney walked over to the foot of the stairs and looked up.
"No, Mary, it would be lumber, and canvas, and curtain material for the stage setting for the Cantata."
"Oh," said Mary, "this ain't it, then, I'll look again."
Mary went back into the girl's room, and the young man stood there waiting. He moved his position impatiently and drew another sigh, and something crackled under his foot. A paper! Probably that was the list. Marguerite had left it on the hall table and it had blown across the floor when the door was opened.
He stooped and picked it up. Yes, it was Marguerite's writing. Probably some directions about color and fabrics. Maybe a bit of a word of apology for going so hurriedly, or even a friendly goodbye. His heart was lifted at the thought. His eyes plunged into the midst of the words in the dim light of the hall, and grasped, searching for that personal word which he so longed to read. So before he was aware that he was reading a note addressed to someone else, he had gathered the whole unhappy truth.
For an instant he stood with the paper quivering in his hand, a sense of mortification upon him for having read something he shouldn't, yet a great sinking within his soul for the facts that had been revealed in that brief note.
So then Daisy Marguerite had gone away without her mother's knowledge! Marguerite to have done a thing like that! She would never have done that a year ago! Something terrible must have happened to get her wrought up to the degree that she would worry her much-loved mother by doing that.
And of course that explained the mother's hasty leave by the next train. Mrs. Sheldon would never allow that quietly without doing something about it. But why, oh, why hadn't she telephoned to him? That is what she would have done even a few weeks ago! Oh, and what was that other awful thing the note had said? When she had accomplished her strange mission, whatever it was, trying to prove that somebody did not exist, she was going to hunt up that unspeakable villain Keller and marry him! Could any calamity loom greater than that to Nelson Whitney in the whole bright world that had suddenly gone black?
At that instant, while he was turning over those awful facts and trying to make something out of them, he heard Mary's brisk footsteps coming down the stairs. Instantly he crushed the paper he held and drove his hand deep into his overcoat pocket.
"I can't find it nowheres, Mr. Nelson," she said, "would you like to go up and look? You might recognize it when I wouldn't."