"I will wait for the answer," he shouted through the keyhole, and falling back he took up his stand against the opposite wall.
I could not keep him company there. Withdrawing into a big dormer window, I waited with beating heart to see if her door would open. Apparently not, yet as I still lingered, I heard the lock turn, followed by the sound of a measured but hurried step. Dashing from my retreat, I reached the main hall in time to see Miss Murray disappear toward the staircase. This was well, and I was about to follow when, to my astonishment, I perceived Dutton standing in the doorway she had just left, staring down at the floor with a puzzled look.
"She didn't pick up the letters," he cried, in amazement. "She just walked over them. What shall I do now? It's the strangest thing I ever saw."
"Take them to the little boudoir over the porch," I suggested. "Mr. Sinclair is there and if she is not on her way to join him now she certainly will be soon."
Without a word Dutton caught up the letters and made for the stairs.
Left to await the result, I found myself so worked upon that I wondered how much longer I should find myself able to endure these shifts of feeling and constantly recurring moments of extreme suspense. To escape the torture of my own thoughts, or, possibly, to get some idea of how Dorothy was sustaining an ordeal which was fast destroying my own self-possession, I prepared to go down stairs. What was my astonishment in passing the little boudoir on the second floor, to find its door ajar and the place empty. Either the interview between Sinclair and Gilbertine had been very much curtailed, or it had not yet taken place. With a heart heavy with forebodings I no longer sought to analyze, I made my way down and reached the lower step of the great staircase just as a half-dozen girls, rushing from different quarters of the hall, surrounded the heavy form of Mr. Armstrong coming from his own little room.
Their questions made a small hubbub. With a good-natured gesture, he put them all back and, raising his voice, said to the assembled crowd:
"It has been decided by Miss Murray that, under the circumstances, it will be wiser for her to postpone the celebration of her marriage to some time and place less fraught with mournful suggestions. A telegram has just been sent to the bishop to that effect, and while we all suffer from this disappointment, I am sure there is no one here who will not see the propriety of her decision."
As he finished, Gilbertine appeared behind him. At the same moment I caught, or thought I did, the flash of Sinclair's eye from the recesses of the room beyond; but I could not stop to make sure of this, for Gilbertine's look and manner were such as to draw my full attention, and it was with a mixture of almost inexplicable emotions that I saw her thread her way among her friends, in a state of high feeling which made her blind to their outstretched hands and deaf to the murmur of interest and sympathy which instinctively followed her. She was making for the stairs, and whatever her thoughts, whatever the state of her mind, she moved superbly, in her pale, yet seemingly radiant abstraction. I watched her, fascinated, yet when she left the last group and began to cross the small square of carpet which alone separated us, I stepped down and aside, feeling that to meet her eye just then without knowing what had passed between her and Sinclair would be cruel to her and well-nigh unbearable to myself.
She saw the movement and seemed to hesitate an instant, then she turned for one brief instant in my direction, and I saw her smile. Great God! it was the smile of innocence. Fleeting as it was, the pride that was in it, the sweet assertion and the joy were unmistakable. I felt like springing to Sinclair's side in the gladness of my relief, but there was no time; another door had opened down the hall, another person had stepped upon the scene, and Miss Murray, as well as myself, recognized by the hush which at once fell upon every one present that something of still more startling import awaited us.