She made a movement toward the balancing letter and he hastily let it drop into the box. “Too late,” he said, in a mock tragic tone. “We are married—tied—bound!”
“And now let us forget it,” was Emily’s reply. “No one knows it except us; and we need never think of it.”
They were silent on the journey downtown, and her slight depression seemed to infect him deeply. Two hours after the ceremony he was dining alone in the Washington express, and she and Joan were having their first dinner in their first “home.”
Two weeks later—in the last week of September—she took the four o’clock boat for Atlantic Highlands and the train there for Seabright. At the edge of the platform of the deserted station she found the yellow trap with stripes of red on the body and shafts—the trap he had described in his letter.
“For Germain’s?” she asked the driver, after she had looked round carefully, as if she were not going to meet her husband.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “They’re expecting you.”
Her trunk and bag were put on the seat with the driver and they were soon in the Rumson road, gorgeous with autumn finery. There were the odours of the sea and the woods, and the air was tranquil yet exhilarating. The trim waggon, the brilliant trees arching overhead, the attractive houses and lawns on either side—it seemed to her that she was in a dream. They turned down a lane to the right. It led through a thick grove of maples, its foliage a tremulous curtain of scarlet and brown lit by the declining sun. Another turn and they were at the side entrance to an old-fashioned brick house with creepers screening verandas and balconies. There were tables on the verandas, and tables out in the garden under the trees. She could hear only the birds and the faint sigh of the distant surf.
Rapid footsteps, and a small, fat, smooth man appeared and bowed profoundly. “Monsieur has not arrived yet,” he said. “Madame Marlowe, is it not?”
She blushed and answered nervously, “Yes—that is—yes.” It was the first time she had heard her legal name, or even had definitely recognised its existence.
“Monsieur telegraphed for madame”—He had a way of saying madame which suggested that it was a politeness rather than an actuality—“to order dinner, and that he will presently come to arrive by the Little Silver station from which he will drive. He missed his train unhappily. But madame need not derange herself. Monsieur comes to arrive now.”