There was noise and light here, a blare of it, and a strange midnight clatter that frightened her.
If it had not been for a kindly agent of the Traveller's Aid who happened by just as she emerged from the iron gate, and said, noting her hesitancy, "Can I help you?" she might have stood there all night perhaps, afraid to venture into that vast empty floor like a little vessel setting sail to an unknown port.
But the friendly Traveller's Aid soon had the weary girl safely established in the great hotel across the way, and possessed of all the information she needed to get herself to the desired number on Fifth Avenue in the morning.
Mind and body cannot continue forever in a state of violent emotion without some rest, and Marguerite, finding herself at last in a quiet room with a luxurious bed, and nothing she could possibly do until morning, succumbed to her weariness and fell into a deep sleep.
She intended quite fully to waken about seven o'clock, get herself in readiness for her errand, and then try to get in touch with Rufus Keller. She thought she had a pretty good idea where to telegraph him, and felt that if she did so, it would only be a matter of a few hours before she had word that he was coming to her at once.
She was not well enough versed in the ways of travelers to leave an order at the hotel desk to have them call her at seven, and if she had been, she would have been too confident that it was unnecessary. She had prided herself for years on her ability to set herself to waken any time at all, and never fail to waken on the minute. However that was, it turned out that she slept on straight past seven, past eight, past nine, past ten, past eleven, and never wakened till quarter to twelve o'clock, dazed and vague as to where she was or why she was there.
Meantime at ten o'clock Mary Dunlap and Mrs. Sheldon arrived in the city, and took their way briskly, attended by a porter carrying their luggage, straight through the tiled tunnel and into the Pennsylvania Hotel, where they were given a room one floor below where Marguerite slept her exhausted sleep.
"We had better not wait for anything," said Marguerite's mother anxiously, giving a push and a pat to the straggling locks about her temples and walking nervously toward the door.
"My dear, you are going to have a cup of coffee before we stir a step," said Mary Dunlap firmly. "I told the boy as we came up in the elevator to have it sent up at once and it's not going to take three minutes to drink it. I tell you nothing is doing in New York until ten, and she can't get away right at once. There is no use running risks. You are going on your nerve, and that might give out at the wrong time and spoil everything. There, he is knocking now. Sit down and drink it. Then we'll call a taxi and be there in no time! It is quite early yet and I'm positive Mr. Oliver—I mean Keller—never goes down to his office before half past ten at the earliest."
But Nelson Whitney had not been able to sleep. He had laid himself properly in bed of course and closed his eyes. He had committed himself and his wishes and his girl to the care of One who was infinitely powerful, infinitely able, infinitely willing to bring order out of confusion, and he was resting on that; but he lay there staring into the night and facing a thing that might be coming to him on the morrow. Supposing he should find that Marguerite had already gone to that other man, and that, unworthy though he believed him to be, she was now irrevocably committed to him, for better, for worse. Could he give up his will in the matter, his joy, his very life, and give up his girl to a sorrow he felt was inevitable if she married Keller?