After the days of doubt, Dolores rested in blessed conviction. Never before had she been given a chance at happiness. Here was her chance. Suggestions of smiles formed about her lips. A new light, like the gleam from deep-cut amethysts, shone from her eyes. A man like John Cabot did not love lightly. And John Cabot loved her.
Next morning she awoke with the wish that her father might know how well all was with her. Although a drizzling rain began to fall, she decided against ordering Jack’s car. She preferred to go to Trevor Trent simply, as they had lived, changed only by the glory from within. She felt close to him while donning, for the first time in weeks, the old blue serge suit whose purchase price he had spared from the poppy paste. The long ride up-town in the Subway, the mudded walk and the plain slab that marked the spot where she had left him to lie beneath down-drifting leaves, brought her nearer.
Where is there comfort like confiding a rapturous secret to one’s own? How long the orphaned girl sat beside the grave, oblivious of the rain because her consciousness had gone to find and gladden that of the parent whose last “please God” had been that she find a good love—how drenched was the blue suit—how chilled her feet—she subtracted none of her attention from him to realize. The adventure brought her content.
Sometime during the afternoon she returned to the great house on the upper Avenue. So dulled she felt to outer perceptions that surprise held her only a moment to meet the Frenchwoman, Annette, in the elevator. She somehow forgot to listen to the maid’s explanation of why she had not remained with madame. Later she was forced to hear Morrison’s insistence that she needed a doctor, but made light of the good woman’s anxiety. What mattered a slight fever or swollen tonsils or a disinclination toward food to one blessed as was she?
As developed, however, these symptoms mattered much in the heightening of her happiness. The housekeeper’s responsibility, transferred to Bradish, resulted in a telephoned message to Mr. Cabot’s club. Soon after the wire, he came, terrified out of all proportion to her trifling symptoms. To see that all his instructions were carried out, he stayed.
Dolores’ protestations soon ceased, since to relieve his anxiety might take him away again. It was too precious to forego, this experience of being ministered to by him. Their first meal alone together, which he ordered served in Jack’s living room much as the youngster himself might have done, was an occasion almost too significant for calm. To please him, she tried to sip her broth and eat her toast, but with the sacred joy of a convert at some sacrament.
After he had shut out the servants and advised Morrison that he would sit awhile with Miss Trent, he wrapped her first in a robe, then in his arms and sat rocking her with a possessive tenderness which made her realize how much she had missed from her babyhood. Her ecstasy of content must have dulled her ears. She heard no sound, merely assumed one, when he placed her in Jack’s reading chair, took a few steps toward the hall door and stood intently listening. Still she had heard nothing when he strode to the door and flung it wide.
Upon the threshold, in a panic of indecision between flight and remaining, stood Annette. Her eyes, nondescript except for their shrewdness, followed the thinking glance of the man who had surprised her from the half-light of the corridor to the strong one of the reading-lamp within, then down to the key-hole, minus its key. Evidently, she decided on bravado. A sneer drew down the corners of her mouth. She straightened to face the master.
“You back?” he asked.
“Madame finds herself in need of certain dinner gowns. She returned me to select and pack them.”