“We will go into the reception room and talk the matter over,” he said decisively. “Colonel Kenwynton will give us the benefit of his advice.”
Colonel Kenwynton had been trained in the school of maneuvers and strategy. Off came his hat from his old white head, and with a resonant “Certainly! Certainly!” he advanced on the other side of Paula, who noticed that he followed Ducie’s example and did not speak her name. “Good evening, good evening, madam, I trust I see you well!” was surely salutation enough to satisfy the most exacting requirements of etiquette.
Scarcely able to move, yet never for one instant relaxing her hold on Ducie’s arm, she suffered herself to be led, half supported, to the reception room, where she sank into an armchair while Ducie stood looking down at her.
“Oh, Mr. Ducie,” she cried plangently, “I had hoped to find Randal here--his arrival was in the paper. I am in such terrible trouble, and I know my old friend would feel for me. Oh, he loved me once! I know he would help me now!”
“I will do whatever Randal could,” said Ducie. His voice was suave and kind, but his face was stern, and doubtful, and inquiring.
“Oh, you look so like him--you might have a heart like his. But you are not like him. Oh, I have not another friend in the world!”
Adrian thought she had not deserved to account Randal Ducie her friend. But this was no occasion to make nice and formal distinctions. He only said:
“Randal is not in town. But if you will give me the opportunity to be of use to you, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, I will do anything I can.”
Both her auditors thought for a moment that she was insane when she replied:
The two men exchanged a glance. Then Ducie heartily declared:
“Why, that is very easily done. But may I ask, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, what use you wish to make of it?”
He was thinking the trifling sum was yet sufficient to work mischief if she were under some temporary aberration.
“I want to go to my aunt’s place in the uplands of Mississippi--my old home! Oh, how I wish I had never left it!”
She threw herself back in the chair and pressed her handkerchief to her streaming eyes. “Mr. Ducie, I have fled from my husband’s house. He has taken my child from me--spirited him away--and I don’t know where he is, nor how he will be cared for. He is only three years old--oh, just a little thing!”