"I will see you in the garden at nine.
"DORIS."
Doris, whom he had believed to be with Lady Dinsmore on the Riviera, in this desolate, wind-raked little Spanish town? What was the meaning of it? He turned to question the old crone, but she had slid noiselessly into the gloom whence she had come, and he was left standing before the hotel with only the scrap of white paper to show that the entire incident was not the wild imagining of an overwrought brain.
He bent his eyes to it again, and especially to the signature. There could be no mistake. That funny little D of Doris, with its childish curl at the end, he would know the world around. It smote him with a strong emotion and gave him a sense of reality. Doris, then, was actually near at hand, breathing the same warm night air, watching the same moon, high and pale, sailing across the sky.
He turned back to the house, and after a casual word with his host, a tall, spare-looking man, with a drooping moustache and a face as sour as the vintages he sold to his guests, he went down the short flight of steps into the garden. The bell of the campanile somewhere in the distance struck the four quarters, and then chimed eight silver strokes. An hour to wait. He flung himself upon a bench at the extreme end of the garden, beneath a pomegranate tree. As he leaned back, a shower of the scarlet flowers fell about him. Not far down the street, perhaps beneath some window, a youth's voice could be heard, sweetened by distance, singing "La Paloma." Cord wondered idly if it were another tryst.
He sprang up, mastered by impatience, and walked about, whistling the same air softly. Minutes passed. Cord wondered how she would come. The only entrance to the enclosed garden which he had remarked lay through the lobby of the hotel. He frowned at the thought of her meeting the cold, leering stare of his host, and decided to meet her upon the street. With a foot upon the lower step, he paused and lifted his head, alert, listening. Behind him, at the end of the garden, coming from the neighbourhood of the bench, he had heard the sound of an unmistakable click. He sprang toward the sound, his blood racing tumultuously through his veins.
Two shadows detached themselves from the deeper gloom of the garden wall, and stood forth uncertainly. One of the shadows held out a hand.
"Cord!" she murmured. She pushed back the enveloping folds of the lace mantilla about her head. It fell away upon her shoulders, and the pale beams of the moon shone full upon her face. It was Doris.
At sight of her, the exclamation of joy died on Van Ingen's lips. He stood rooted to the spot by the startling change in her countenance. Her blue eyes, once so laughing, looked out from black hollows, her cheeks were pale and slightly drawn, and her mouth colourless. Fear, depression, misery, spoke in every drooping line of her figure. "Well?" she said at last, tremulously. "You—are not glad to see me?"
With a hoarse little cry, he took her into his arms, and held her close.