The shadows of shrub and tree crept and shortened to the lines of noon, and still, no word. They began to wonder, why.
Mr. Armstrong would go back. He might be wanted, somehow. They should hear again, immediately, unless he were detained.
He was not detained. They watched him up the field, and into the angle of the doorway. He was hidden there a moment, but not more. Then they saw him turn, as one lingering and reluctant, and retrace his steps toward them.
"Faith! Stay here, darling! Let me meet him first," said Mrs. Gartney.
Faith shrank back, fearful of she knew not what, into the room they had just quitted.
A sudden, panic dread and terror seized her. She felt her hearing sharpened, strained, involuntarily. She should catch that first word, however it might be spoken. She dared not hear it, yet. Out at the hillside door, into the shade of the deep evergreens, she passed, with a quick impulse.
Thither Roger Armstrong followed, presently, and found her. With the keen instinct of a loving sympathy, he knew she fled from speech. So he put his arm about her, silently, tenderly; and led her on, and up, under the close, cool shade, the way their steps had come to know so well.
"Take it for good news, darling. For it is good," he said, at last, when he had placed her in the rocky seat, where she had listened to so many treasured words—to that old, holy confidence—of his.
And there he comforted her.