"A few days!" I echoed.
"More or less. By George! he will be mad when he knows he's kept you waiting. For, of course, you will wait, won't you, Mr. Stanton?"
"I should certainly like to see him before I go back to the East," I said; and I spoke no more than the truth, for, putting my cordial feeling for Farnham out of the question, it might be that valuable information concerning Wildred's past could be wrested from him with due diplomacy. "Still, I hardly feel like hanging about Denver for an indefinite length of time, doing nothing. I shouldn't mind a little journey, as I've come so far. If he's at any of the Colorado mines, perhaps I might run out and join him; I've been there with him before, you may remember."
"You might indeed, sir," returned Bennett, still embarrassed, "if he was in any such place, which he isn't. To tell you the plain truth, Mr. Stanton, as I'm sure Mr. Farnham would wish, if he could dream it was you I was talking to, why, this little journey of his is strictly on the 'Q. T.' I guess from what he said there's a lady mixed up in it."
Exactly what Wildred had said, when explaining his friend's absence on Christmas Day from the House by the Lock! I remembered the coincidence, though I could hardly see that it bore with any importance on the present case. Farnham might hold several feminine trump cards to play at the end of a trick for all I knew, or had a right to know.
"I tell you what to do, Mr. Stanton," Bennett continued, recovering his wonted self-possession. "You just go up to the house, and make yourself at home there till Mr. Farnham gets back. You know what a big place it is, and how glad the chief is to fill it with his friends, especially such friends as you. Then, by the end of next week, anyhow—"
I interrupted him impatiently. "What, will he be away till then?"
"I should think it was probable from what he said before he left, sir."
"I wish," I exclaimed desperately, "that you could see your way to making things a little clearer for me. I don't want to pry into Farnham's affairs, of course–that goes without saying. But perhaps, without any betrayal of confidence, you might let me know exactly what he did tell you in regard to his return."
"Well," said Bennett, with a short laugh, "seeing it's you! The fact is, Mr. Stanton, it'll be a considerable relief to my mind to talk over the matter, and ask your opinion as to one or two points that have been rather troubling me."