We had almost given up hope, when suddenly a little buzzer on the telephote warned the operator that something was coming over it.
"The _Monfalcone_," he remarked, interpreting the source of the impulses.
"We gathered breathlessly about the complicated instrument as, on a receiving screen composed of innumerable pencils of light polarized and acting on a set of mirrors, each corresponding to the cells of the selenium screen and tuned to them, as it were, a thin film or veil seemed gradually to clear up, as the telephote slowly got itself into equilibrium at both ends of the air line. Gradually the face of a girl appeared.
"Gloria!" gasped Mrs. Brackett in a tone that sounded as if ten years had been added to her life.
"Wait," cautioned the operator. "There is a written message to follow."
On the same screen now came in letters that Mrs. Brackett in her joy recognized the message: "I couldn't help it. I was blackmailed into taking the necklace. Even at the hunt I received another demand. I did not mean to go, but I was carried off by force before I could pay the second demand. Now I'm glad of it. Forgive us. Gloria."
"Us?" repeated Mrs. Brackett, not comprehending.
"Look--another picture," pointed Kennedy.
We bent over as the face of a man seemed to dissolve more clearly in place of the writing.
"Thank God!" exclaimed Mrs. Brackett fervently, reading the face by a sort of intuition before it cleared enough for us to recognize. "He has saved her from herself!"
Slowly it faded and in its place appeared another written message.
"Recalled to Italy for war service. I took her with me by force. It was the only way. Civil ceremony in New York yesterday. Religious will follow at Rome."
"My husband has such a jealous disposition. He will never believe the truth--never!"
Agatha Seabury moved nervously in the deep easy chair beside Kennedy's desk, leaning forward, uncomfortably, the tense lines marring the beauty of her fine features.
Kennedy tilted his desk chair back in order to study her face.
"You say you have never written a line to the fellow nor he to you?" he asked.
"Not a line, not a scrap,--until I received that typewritten letter about which I just told you," she repeated vehemently, meeting his penetrating gaze without flinching. "Why, Professor Kennedy, as heaven is my witness, I have never done a wrong thing--except to meet him now and then at afternoon dances."