“Just about three minutes ago,” said Miss Perry.  “He said that if you had missed your train, you wouldn’t be here for more than an hour, and it was no use waiting.”

“You see, it was a changed time-table, and he forgot it just as I did,” explained Susanna, pleased to find him fallible, even to that extent.

“But he was on time,” fenced Miss Perry, innocently.

“They don’t change the business trains,” Susanna said coldly.  And she decided that she disliked this girl.  She opened a magazine and sat down by the open window.

The minutes ticked slowly by.  The telephone rang, doors opened and shut, and men came and went through the office.  Susanna, opposed in every fibre of her being to passive waiting, suddenly rose.

“Dr. Archibald is in the First National Bank Building, isn’t he?” she inquired.  “I think I’ll join Mrs. Thayer up there.  There’s no use in my waiting here.”

Miss Perry silently verified Dr. Archibald’s address in the telephone book, and to the First National Bank Building Susanna immediately made her way.  It was growing warmer now and the streets seemed noisy and crowded, but no matter—­“If I can only get to them and see Jim!” thought Susanna.

In the pleasant shadiness of Dr. Archibald’s office, rising from a delightful mahogany arm-chair, Susanna presently asked if Mrs. Thayer could be told that Mrs. Fairfax was there.

“I think Mrs. Thayer is gone,” said the attendant pleasantly.  “I’m not sure, but I’ll see.”

In a few minutes she returned to inform Mrs. Fairfax that Mrs. Thayer had just come in to have a bridge replaced, and was gone.

“You don’t know where?” Susanna’s voice was a trifle husky with repressed emotion.  She realized that she was getting a headache.

No, the attendant didn’t know where.

So there was nothing for it but to go back to Jim’s office, and back Susanna accordingly went.  She walked as fast as she could, conscious of every separate hot step, and was nervous and headachy when she entered Miss Perry’s presence again.

Mr. Fairfax and Mrs. Thayer had not come in; no, but Miss Perry reported that Mr. Fairfax had telephoned not ten minutes ago, and seemed very anxious to get hold of his wife.

“Oh, dear, dear!” lamented Susanna.  “And where is he now?”

Miss Perry couldn’t say.  “I wrote his message down,” she said, with sympathetic amusement at Susanna’s crushed dismay.  And, referring to her notes, she repeated it: 

“Mr. Fairfax said that Mrs. Thayer had had an appointment to see a sick friend in a hospital this afternoon.  But she has gone right out there now instead, so that you and she can go shopping after lunch.  You are, please, to meet Mr. Fairfax and the Thayers at the Palace for luncheon at half-past one; there’ll be a table reserved.  Mr. Fairfax has a little business to attend to just now, but if you don’t mind waiting in the office, he thinks it’s the coolest place you could be.  He wanted to know if you had the whole afternoon free--”