Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/408

Rh Cicely and the tranquillized governess had been despatched on a walk with the dogs, and Justine was returning upstairs when she met one of the servants with a telegram. She tore it open with a great throb of relief. It was her own message to Amherst—address unknown.…

Had she misdirected it, then? In that ﬁrst blinding moment her mind might so easily have failed her. But no—there was the name of the town before her.…Millﬁeld, Georgia … the same name as in his letter.… She had made no mistake, but he was gone! Gone—and without leaving an address.… For a moment her tired mind refused to work; then she roused herself, ran down the stairs again, and rang up the telegraph-ofﬁce. The thing to do, of course, was to telegraph to the owner of the mills—of whose very name she was ignorant!—enquiring where Amherst was, and asking him to forward the message. Precious hours must be lost meanwhile—but, after all, they were waiting for no one upstairs.

The verdict had been pronounced: dislocation and fracture of the fourth vertebra, with consequent injury to the spinal cord. Dr. Garford and Wyant came out alone to tell her. The surgeon ran over the technical details, her brain instantly at attention as he developed his diagnosis and issued his orders. She asked no [ 392 ]