Dorothy chatted away, asking the name of the horse and making extravagant love to him. But what had happened to Sybil—the voluble, sometimes the sharp? She stood there dumb, and apparently unable to take her pleading eyes from the smiling face above her. At last the job was finished, and as Mr. Lawton placed the bronze-booted foot in the stirrup Miss Morrell's sigh of comfort and exclamation: "Ah, it does feel good to have it again, after all!" made that melancholy old gentleman laugh aloud from sheer self-satisfaction; and then, as she gathered up her reins, she gayly remarked: "Young ladies, since your father has introduced you by your first names only, perhaps you will now introduce him to me?"
And with much laughter they each took him by a hand and presented him in full name—"Mr. John W. Lawton."
Still feeling Sybil's glance, and being well used to adoring girls, Claire Morrell said, after thanking him for his kindness: "Mr. Lawton, I live just opposite, on Riverdale Avenue. If you go so far afield, will you not call upon me?" Then, touching the fading dandelion with her crop, she added: "I see you are fond of flowers. Perhaps your father will permit you and Miss Dorothy to come over some day and take a look at my posies?"
The color rushed over Sybil's face and her eyes fairly blazed in sudden joy, and the actress felt she had at least partly translated that beseeching gaze. Dorothy accepted the invitation very prettily for herself and sister, Mr. Lawton raised his hat, and as the actress wheeled her horse about her white glove fell to the ground and she rode on, leaving it there. Dorothy snatched it up and passed it to Sybil, while John Lawton looked after the rider and remarked, with emphasis: "A charming woman!"
And Dorothy answered, excitedly: "I always thought actresses had to be pretty women, though at night even this Miss Morrell looks——"
"Never mind what she looks!" interrupted her father. "She's a charming woman! You must go over some day and see her at home!" And he returned to his paper under the willow.
Dorothy went at once to her mother to give that lady a voluminous and detailed account of what had happened, and to be cross-examined at great length as to the make of the actress's habit, the quality of her horse, and the condition of her complexion, greatly doubting, as she did, Dorothy's assertion as to its naturalness. But Sybil fled upstairs and flung herself across the bed and pressed her hot cheek against the crumpled rein-rubbed glove. Her wish had been granted, and all had happened so unexpectedly. Nervous, foolish, joyful tears ran down her cheeks, and, as she recalled the comprehending blue eyes of her Woman of Fate, she knew in her heart that she had found help.