The hospital called her on the telephone about eight o'clock in the morning: "Miss Evelyn Erith, please?"
"Yes," she said in a tired voice, "who is it?"
"Is this Miss Erith?"
"Yes."
"This is the Superintendent's office, Samaritan, Hospital, Miss Dalton speaking."
The girl's heart contracted with a pang of sheer pain. She closed her eyes and waited. The voice came over the wire again: "A wreath of Easter lilies with your card came early--this morning. I'm very sure there is a mistake--"
"No," she whispered, "the flowers are for a patient who died in the hospital last night--a young man whom I brought there in my car--Kay McKay."
"I was afraid so--"
"What!"
"McKay isn't dead! It's another patient. I was sure somebody here had made a mistake."
Miss Erith swayed slightly, steadied herself with a desperate effort to comprehend what the voice was telling her.
"There was a mistake made last night," continued Miss Dalton. "Another patient died--a similar case. When I came on duty a few moments ago I learned what had occurred. The young man in whom you are interested is conscious this morning. Would you care to see him before he is discharged?"
Miss Erith said, unsteadily, that she would.
She had recovered her self-command but her knees remained weak and her lips tremulous, and she rested her forehead on both hands which had fallen, tightly clasped, on the table in front of her. After a few moments she felt better and she rang up her D. C., Mr. Vaux, and explained that she expected to be late at the office. After that she got the garage on the wire, ordered her car, and stood by the window watching the heavily falling snow until her butler announced the car's arrival.
The shock of the message informing her that this man was still alive now rapidly absorbed itself in her reviving excitement at the prospect of an approaching interview with him. Her car ran cautiously along Park Avenue through the driving snow, but the distance was not far and in a few minutes the great red quadrangle of the Samaritan Hospital loomed up on her right. And even before she was ready, before she quite had time to compose her mind in preparation for the questions she had begun to formulate, she was ushered into a private room by a nurse on duty who detained her a moment at the door: "The patient is ready to be discharged," she whispered, "but we have detained him at your request. We are so sorry about the mistake."
"Is he quite conscious?"
"Entirely. He's somewhat shaken, that is all. Otherwise he shows no ill effects."