"When? how?" he asked, wonderingly.
"She was at the house-party Mr. Saunders gave last summer, and he introduced us on the road one day," Dolly explained, with an indignant toss of the head. "Oh, I could never—never like her. She treated me exactly as if I had been a hireling. She is your sister, but Lord deliver me from such a woman. Well, what's the use denying it—she is part of my premonition. You may settle your business troubles satisfactorily, but if—if you should tell her about me, she will move heaven and earth to convince you that I am unworthy of your notice."
"Nonsense!" he began; but with a sad little shake of the head she hurried away.
Left alone, Mostyn's heart sank into the lowest ebb of despair. Back and forth he strode, trying to shake off his despondency, but it lay on him like the weight of a mountain. What would the morrow bring forth? To him his sister's objections would be the very least. The real disaster lay in the matter Dolly's pure mind could not have grasped. He took out the letter Saunders had brought and read it again.
"She is simply desperate—the little cat!" he cried. "I might have known she would turn on me. For the last three months she has been 'a woman scorned,' and she is not going to be easily put aside. Fool, fool that I was, and always have been, I deserve it! It may ruin me—men have been ruined by smaller things than this. Can this be the beginning of my end?" He sank into the chair Dolly had vacated and rocked back and forth. Suddenly he had a sort of inspiration.
"I might take the midnight train," he reflected. "Why, yes, I could do that, and have my trunk sent on to-morrow. In that case I'd avoid riding back with Saunders and be there early in the morning. Surely she will be quiet that long."
CHAPTER XIV
Mostyn reached the city at five o'clock in the morning. The sun was just rising over the chimneys and dun roofs of the buildings. He lived in the house of his widowed sister, Mrs. John Perkins Moore, in a quiet but fashionable street, and thither he went in one of the numbered cabs which, in charge of slouching negro drivers, meet all trains at the big station.