“Aw, it’s deuced draughty, don’t-che know!”
A few minutes later Mr. Harris beckoned Virginia into the library. After delivering her the check he had promised, they together went out in search for John Thorpe, but he had disappeared.
Had they looked more closely and further up the hillside, they might have seen a haggard man sitting in the shadow of a fir, apparently weary of the world, and pondering on the vicissitudes of life.
CHAPTER XII.
In the meantime Virginia had been doing her utmost, in a quiet way, to obtain the necessary amount of Dorothy’s ransom.
Conscious of an imperative demand likely to be made upon her at any moment, she had partially prepared for it by secretly borrowing some five thousand dollars upon her jewelry and income, and she had obtained five thousand more from Mr. Harris, who was eager to favor her, because of the obligations it would place her under to his family, particularly Sam.
It was useless to approach Hazel for assistance, as John Thorpe was administrator of her estate. However, she was in a fair way to get more on a trust deed for some real estate that was in her name—when the summons came, peremptory and threatening.
She pondered over the situation long and profoundly, and having at length thoroughly made up her mind on a line of procedure, she prepared for the meeting.
Of delicate mould, carefully educated, and accustomed to vivacious and accomplished companions, Virginia was little intended for the desperate enterprise she had determined to undertake, in the dead hour of the coming night. More than once she shuddered at the thought, but that vision of Constance in the shadow of the “grim sickle,” nerved her on to the rescue, and it also afforded her a sense of relief from the distress her mind endured. Overwhelmed at the magnitude of the misfortune so suddenly overtaken Constance, she hesitated not for an instant to risk her life in its undoing.
Personality, social position, beauty, youth, refinement—all were cast aside, unconsidered and unthought of in the execution of the one perilous act that confronted her.