"I am Miss Ridge!" came excitedly from her trembling lips, the hot blood
crimsoning her cheeks.

"A telephone--"

"For me?" she asked uneasily.

"From Mr. Ridge; wants you to wait," finished the boy.

"Thank you! Oh, thank you!" The girl beamed her relief on the staring
bell-boy. And, the message having been delayed, the grateful words were
hardly spoken before Hugh, almost distracted, rushed into the room.
Regardless of appearances or consequences, the tall young fellow seized
her and kissed her in a fashion that would have brought terrible
rebuke, under any other circumstance, and which certainly caused the
clerk to consider this Mr. Ridge the most demonstrative brother that in
a long experience in hotel life he had ever encountered. When Hugh held
her at arm's length to give his admiring gaze full scope, he saw tears
of joy swimming in her eyes. Her voice quivered as she sighed:

"I should have died in another moment!"

"You are the dearest girl in all the world!" Then he explained to her
the cause of the delay. After getting rid of Woods, he had rushed to the
Hotel Astor, where he expected to find her waiting for him. All
inquiries as to whether any lady answering to her description had been
seen there had resulted in failure. He would have been there yet,
growing angrier all the while, had not a gentleman who had overheard his
troubles suggested that he telephone the Astor House, in the hope that
the lady might be waiting there.