Tom Hammond did not press them to stay, for he, too, felt awkward. The friends shook hands. The eyes of Madge and Hammond met for one instant. Each face flushed under the power of the other’s glance.
When the door had closed upon them, Tom went back to his old place by the table, his eyes involuntarily sweeping the whole apartment. He smiled as he suddenly realized how empty the room now seemed. His glance rested upon the tea-tray, and he rang for the lad Charlie.
“Clear all this away, Charlie, please,” he began. Then with a smile he said, “You will find a capital cup of tea in that pot.”
The boy grinned. At his first glance at the tray he had mentally decided that he would be able to have a rare feast. A couple of minutes, and the boy had gone.
Tom Hammond gathered up his mail, and was about to drop into his ordinary seat, when he remembered the rocker. With a smile at Madge’s occupancy of the chair, he dropped into it.
For fully five minutes he sat still thinking, reviewing all the circumstances of the peculiar situation upon which the unexpected coming of George Carlyon had broken. He asked himself whether he was really in love with the fair Madge, and whether he would have proposed to her if her cousin had not so unexpectedly turned up? He made no definite reply to his own questioning, but turned to his mail.
The telegram he had opened at once on its receipt. He turned now to the letters. He had opened all but two. The last one was addressed in a woman’s hand-writing. Breaking the envelope, he took out the letter, and turned first to the signature on the fourth page.
“Millicent Joyce,” he read. “Millicent Joyce?” he repeated. Unconsciously he had laid his emphasis on the “Millicent,” and he forgot the “Joyce.”
But suddenly it came to him that the letter was from Mrs. Joyce, the woman whom he had helped to save from drowning on the night of that memorable day when the great chance of his life had come to him.
“Poor soul!” he muttered. “I wonder what she has written about?” The next instant he was reading the letter.