But Althea was too overwrought to see any but the dangerous side of the affair. "I hope no harm will come to you," she exclaimed fervently.
"There is not the slightest fear of anything of the sort. But there mustn't be three of us in the room when Ellen comes in or she'll take one of us for a ghost. And the time's up."
She came very close to me and I saw she was trembling. "I pray to Heaven all will be well," she cried earnestly.
"Within five minutes of our reaching his house I shall have that fellow on his knees. And now, you must go, or I shall be tempted to upset all these beastly arrangements on my head and--well, you know," I laughed.
At that moment we heard the sound of the carriage and she hurried away upstairs.
Then I saw how my sister had been hiding her real apprehension under a light laughing humour. "It will be all right, Paul? You are sure?" she asked, her lip trembling.
I replied in the same light vein as to Althea. "Unless the fool tries to kiss me in the carriage, or I give myself away, I cannot fail. I shall be back again in a very short time; and remember what I told you--you may have to rush off by the mail to-night. Be ready."
Ellen opened the door then and announced that the carriage had come.
"Good-bye then, Althea," exclaimed Bessie, most naturally. "And with all my heart good luck."
She walked with me as far as the front door to cover my burlesque of a girl's gait, and I tiptoed quickly across the pavement, entered the carriage, and leaned forward to wave my hand to her.