She hunted up the station-agent and received scanty encouragement: Very likely he had seen such a man; there were many of that description getting off every day. They generally went to the Inn—Brambleside Inn. The season was just open and society people were beginning to come. No, there was no conveyance. The Inn’s ’buses did not meet any train after the six-thirty from town, unless ordered especially by guests. Was she expected?
Patsy was about to shake her head when a roadster swung around the corner of the station and came to a dead stop in front of where she and the station-master were standing.
The driver peered at her through his goggles in a questioning, hesitating manner. “Is this—are you Miss St. Regis?” he finally asked.
“Miriam St. Regis?” Patsy intended it for a question, realizing even as she spoke the absurdity of inquiring the name of an English actress at such a place.
But the driver took it for a statement of identity. “Yes, of course, Miss Miriam St. Regis. Mr. Blake made a mistake and thought because your box came from town you’d be coming that way. It wasn’t until your manager, Mr. Travis, telephoned half an hour ago that he realized you’d be on that southbound train. Awfully sorry to have kept you waiting. Step right in, please.”
Whereupon the driver removed himself from the roadster, assisted her to a seat, covered her with a rug—for early June evenings can be rather sharp—and the next moment Patsy found herself tearing down a stretch of country road with the purr of a motor as music to her ears.
“Sure, I don’t know who wrote the play and starred me in it,” she mused, dreamily, “but he certainly knows how to handle situations.”
For the space of a few breaths she gave herself over completely to the luxury of bodily comfort and mental inertia. It seemed as if she would have been content to keep on whirling into an eternity of darkness—with a destination so remote, and a mission so obscure, as not to be of the slightest disturbance to her immediate consciousness. All she asked of fate that moment was the blessedness of nothing; and for answer—her mind was jerked back ruthlessly to the curse of more complexities.