“She said nothing to you last night about having an appointment with him? Or with any one?”
She hesitated.
“Are you—Bessie’s friend?”
“I am. At least, I hope I may call myself her friend, although I never spoke to her before last night. I do not think that there is anything which I would not do to save her from misconstruction.”
She eyed me—quizzically.
“I think I’ll trust you, Mr. Ferguson, though I never trusted a man yet without regretting it. I hope you won’t feel hurt, but there is something about you which reminds me of a St. Bernard. You’re big—very big; you look strong—awfully strong; you’re hairy.” I involuntarily put my hand up to my beard. “Oh, I don’t mean that you’re too hairy, the beard’s becoming; but you are hairy. You look simple; somehow one associates simplicity with trustworthiness; and now you’re blushing.” She would have made any one blush! “The blush settles it; I will repose my confidence in you, as I have done in others!”
Her manner changed; she became serious.
“The truth is that last night Bessie did seem worried, frightfully worried; and that’s what’s been worrying me. She was not like her usual self a bit; I couldn’t make her out at all. I hadn’t the faintest notion what was wrong; when I asked her if she was ill she snapped my head off. And for Bessie to be snappish was an unheard-of thing; her temper’s not like mine, always going off, she’s the gentlest, sweetest soul. She dressed herself, and walked out of the theatre, without saying a word to me; I only ran against her in the street, by accident, just as she was getting into a cab.
“I said, ‘Bessie, aren’t you coming home with me?’—because we always do come home together. But she answered, quite huffishly, that she was not—she had an appointment to keep. I did not dare to ask with whom, or where; though it did seem odd that she should have made an appointment, at that hour of the night, without saying a word of it to me; but I did venture to inquire when I might expect her to return. Leaning her head out of the cab, just as it was starting, she called out to me, ‘Perhaps never.’ I didn’t suppose that she was entirely in earnest, but somehow I couldn’t help feeling that, about the answer, there was something which might turn out to be unpleasantly prophetic.”
“One thing is plain, Miss Adair, you must come with me at once to Imperial Mansions. Your presence may restore to your friend her memory. But, whether or not, you must bring her home, or at any rate you must take her away from the Mansions, and that immediately.”