His night was a succession of forebodings, dreamed or half-wakeful. Spent and dispirited, he rose at an hour quite out of accord with the habits of The Retreat, sped his car to New York, and put his inquiry to Judge Enderby’s man.
Yes; the telegram had arrived. In time? No; it was delivered twenty minutes after the Judge had left for his train.
CHAPTER XVIII
Sun-lulled into immobility, the desert around the lonely little station of Manzanita smouldered and slumbered. Nothing was visibly changed from five years before, when Banneker left, except that another agent, a disillusioned-appearing young man with a corn-colored mustache, came forth to meet the slow noon local, chuffing pantingly in under a bad head of alkali-water steam. A lone passenger, obviously Eastern in mien and garb, disembarked, and was welcomed by a dark, beautiful, harassed-looking girl who had just ridden in on a lathered pony. The agent, a hopeful soul, ambled within earshot.
“How is she?” he heard the man say, with the intensity of a single thought, as the girl took his hand. Her reply came, encouragingly.
“As brave as ever. Stronger, a little, I think.”
“And she—the eyes?”
“She will be able to see you; but not clearly.”