"Oh!" said the girl. "I never thought of it again."
"Well, it's of no consequence now," he grinned, "I made up one instead and ordered the things. You'll have to use what there is, or get more. However, when Mary and I started to look for the list there was your note to your mother right on the floor by the stairs in the lower hall. How it got there I don't know, but as Mary was upstairs and I hadn't much time, and the note was in your handwriting, I picked it up and read it. Of course I hadn't gone far before I discovered it wasn't the list, but I couldn't let it go then for I had caught a word or two that showed me you were in danger, and that your mother must be somewhere in sorrow hunting for you, so I put it in my pocket as Mary came down stairs and took it away with me. If you ask me I think the Lord left that note there for me to read. I thought you belonged enough to me to give me the right to read it."
Marguerite with reddening cheeks and shamed eyes was trying to recall what she had said in that mad hasty note she had left for her mother when she hurried to the midnight train.
"The rest was a cinch of course," went on Nelson. "I had the address to which you were going in your own handwriting. I had only to meet you at the train in New York as it came in, if I could get there ahead of you. Or, failing in that, as I did, I had the second chance of catching you at the office before you went off to marry that villain."
Marguerite's shamed face did not lift, but a little quiver went through her slight frame.
"But—how did you get here in time?" she asked. "Why, that must have been rather late in the morning when you found that note. Of course I knew there was an early morning train and that Mother would probably take that, but I had hoped to have everything straightened out before she came. But the only other train after you found out is a local, and you couldn't possibly have got here even yet unless you flew. Are you a mystery man?"
"That's exactly what I did. I flew here," said Nelson.
"What do you mean?" she asked lifting wondering eyes that seemed to have forgotten their trouble for the moment. "Don't tease me, please. I'm so tired!" And she drooped upon his arm.
"Poor little girl! I'm forgetting all you've gone through. We'll find that water, and then go for something to eat. If I remember, it was down this path. I came here once three years ago, and thought how some day I would perhaps bring you."
A quick turn brought them to a spring gurgling in a granite basin, and Marguerite dashed the water in her face and dried it on another big clean handkerchief that Nelson brought forth from a capacious pocket.