He stopped in the hall, and then, tempted by his despair, he stepped
within the open door of the next room and looked vaguely over it, with
shame at being there. What was it that the girl had missed, and had come
back to look for? Some trifle, no doubt, which she had not cared to
lose, and yet had not wished to leave behind. He failed to find anything
in the search, which he could not make very thorough, and he was going
guiltily out when his eye fell upon an envelope, perversely fallen
beside the door and almost indiscernible against the white paint, with
the addressed surface inward.
This must be the object of her search, and he could understand why she
was not very anxious when he found it a circular from a nursery-man,
containing nothing more valuable than a list of flowering shrubs. He
satisfied himself that this was all without satisfying himself that he
had quite a right to do so; and he stood abashed in the presence of the
superscription on the envelope somewhat as if Miss Barbara F. Simpson,
Upper Ashton Falls, N. H., were there to see him tampering with her
correspondence. It was indelicate, and he felt that his whole behavior
had been indelicate, from the moment her laugh had wakened him in the
night till now, when he had invaded her room. He had no more doubt that
she was the taller of the two girls than that this was her name on the
envelope. He liked Barbara; and Simpson could be changed. He seemed to
hear her soft throaty laugh in response to the suggestion, and with a
leap of the heart he slipped the circular into his breast pocket.
After breakfast he went to the hotel office, and stood leaning on the
long counter and talking with the clerk till he could gather courage to
look at the register, where he knew the names of these girls must be
written. He asked where Upper Ashton Falls was, and whether it would be
a pleasant place to spend a week.
The clerk said that it was about thirty miles up the road, and was one
of the nicest places in the mountains; Langbourne could not go to a
nicer; and there was a very good little hotel. "Why," he said, "there
were two ladies here overnight that just left for there, on the
seven-forty. Odd you should ask about it."
Langbourne owned that it was odd, and then he asked if the ladies lived
at Upper Ashton Falls, or were merely summer folks.
"Well, a little of both," said the clerk. "They're cousins, and they've
got an aunt living there that they stay with. They used to go away
winters,--teaching, I guess,--but this last year they stayed right
through. Been down to Springfield, they said, and just stopped the night
because the accommodation don't go any farther. Wake you up last night?
I had to put 'em into the room next to yours, and girls usually talk."
Langbourne answered that it would have taken a good deal of talking to
wake him the night before, and then he lounged across to the time-table
hanging on the wall, and began to look up the trains for Upper Ashton
Falls.
"If you want to go to the Falls," said the clerk, "there's a through
train at four, with a drawing-room on it, that will get you there by
five."
"Oh, I fancy I was looking up the New York trains," Langbourne returned.
He did not like these evasions, but in his consciousness of Miss Simpson
he seemed unable to avoid them. The clerk went out on the veranda to
talk with a farmer bringing supplies, and Langbourne ran to the
register, and read there the names of Barbara F. Simpson and Juliet D.
Bingham. It was Miss Simpson who had registered for both, since her name
came first, and the entry was in a good, simple hand, which was like a
man's in its firmness and clearness. He turned from the register decided
to take the four-o'clock train for Upper Ashton Falls, and met a
messenger with a telegram which he knew was for himself before the boy
could ask his name. His partner had fallen suddenly sick; his recall was
absolute, his vacation was at an end; nothing remained for him but to
take the first train back to New York. He thought how little prescient
he had been in his pretence that he was looking the New York trains up;
but the need of one had come already, and apparently he should never
have any use for a train to Upper Ashton Falls.