Instinctively I knew it would be of no use to appeal to my father, for though it was possible that he might knock my husband down, it was not conceivable that he would encourage me to separate from him.
In my loneliness and helplessness I felt like a shipwrecked sailor, who, having broken away from the foundering vessel that would have sucked him under, is yet tossing on a raft with the threatening ocean on every side, and looking vainly for a sail.
At last I thought of Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, and decided to send a telegram to him asking for the name of some solicitor in London to whom I could apply for advice.
To carry out this intention I went down to the hall about nine o'clock, when people were passing into the breakfast-room, and visitors were calling at the bureau, and livened page-boys were shouting names in the corridors.
There was a little writing-room at one side of the hall and I sat there to write my telegram. It ran—
"Please send name and address reliable solicitor London whom I can consult on important business."
I was holding the telegraph-form in my hand and reading my message again and again to make sure that it would lead to no mischief, when I began to think of Martin Conrad.
It seemed to me that some one had mentioned his name, but I told myself that must have been a mistake,—that, being so helpless and so much in need of a friend at that moment, my heart and not my ears had heard it.
Nevertheless as I sat holding my telegraph-form I became conscious of somebody who was moving about me. It was a man, for I could smell the sweet peaty odour of his Harris tweeds.
At length with that thrill which only the human voice can bring to us when it is the voice of one from whom we have been long parted, I heard somebody say, from the other side of the desk: