Needless to say, Tom and Maria returned in perfect safety on Saturday.  Before then, at twelve o’clock on the same morning, when Cyrus and Peggy had gone, I was sitting on the piazza making a little money-bag for her, with mother sitting rocking beside me, and complaining of every one in peace, when Dr. Denbigh drove up to the horse-block, flung his weight out of the buggy, and hurried up the steps.  He shook hands with us hastily and abstractedly, and asked if he might speak to me inside the house.

“Mrs. Talbert,” he said, closing the door of the library as soon as we were inside it, “I am sure you will try not to feel alarmed at something I must tell you of at once.  The early morning train I came on from New York, the one that ought to get in at Eastridge at eleven, was derailed two hours ago on a misplaced switch between here and Whitman.  No one was killed, but many of the passengers were injured.  Among the injured I took care of was Mr. Goward.  His arm has been broken.  He’s been badly shaken up—­and he’s now in a state of shock at the Whitman Hospital.  The boy has been asking for Peggy, and then for you.  I promised him that after my work was done—­all the injured were taken there by a special as soon as possible after the wreck—­I’d ask you to drive back to see him.  Will you come?”

Of course I went, then.  And at Harry Goward’s request I have gone twice since.  He is very ill, too ill to talk, and though Dr. Denbigh says he will outlive a thousand stronger men, he has been rather worse this morning.  When I first saw him he asked for Peggy in one gasping word, and when he learned she had gone to Washington turned even whiter than he had been before.  He is nervously quite wrecked and wretched; has no confidence in Dr. Denbigh; and either Maria or I will go to the hospital every day till the boy’s mother comes from California.  It is a very trying situation.  For his misfortune has, of course, not changed my knowledge of his nature.  I dread telling Cyrus and Peggy, when I meet their returning noon train, after I have left mother at home, of everything that has happened here.

As though these difficulties were not enough, this morning, just before we started to Whitman, we were involved in another perplexity through the unwilling agency of Mr. Temple.  He called me up to read me a bewildering telegram he had received an hour before from Elizabeth.  It said: 

“Please end Eastridge scandal by announcing my engagement in Banner.—­Lily.”

“Engagement to whom?” Mr. Temple had asked by telephone of Charles, who said none of us could be responsible for any definite information in the matter unless, perhaps, Maria.  On consultation, Maria had said to Mr. Temple that in New York Mr. Goward had imparted to her that Elizabeth had told him many weeks ago that she was irrevocably betrothed to Dr. Denbigh.  Mr. Temple had finally referred unsuccessfully to me for Elizabeth’s address in order to ask her to send a complete announcement in the full form she wished printed.