“I will make the most of my time,” he replied.
Dolly stood at the window and watched him go down the walk to the gates.
“This is the something which was going to happen,” she commented. “Having set matters straight with Grif, I suppose it is necessary, for the maintenance of my self-control, that I should have a difficulty about Mollie; but I think I could have retained my equilibrium without it.”
The two days passed quietly enough up to Thursday afternoon. Whatever Ralph Gowan had discovered, he was keeping to himself for the present. He had not written, and he had not called. Naturally, Dolly was impatient. She began to be very impatient indeed, as the afternoon waned, and it became dusk. Worse still, her old restlessness came upon her. She could not make up her mind to leave Brabazon Lodge until she had either seen or heard from Gowan, and she was afraid that if she lingered late Griffith would arrive before her, and would be troubled by her non-appearance. Since the night they had met in the street she had not seen him, and she had much to say to him. She had looked forward anxiously to this evening, and the few quiet hours they were to spend together in the dear old disreputable parlor at Bloomsbury Place. They had spent so many blissful evenings in that parlor, that the very thought of it made her heart beat happily. Nobody would be there to interfere with them. The rest of the family would, good-naturedly, vacate and leave them alone, and she would take her old chair by the fire, and Grif would sit near her, and in ten minutes after they had sat so together, they would have left all their troubles behind them, and wandered off into a realm of tender dreams and sweet unrealities. But, impatient as she was to be gone, Dolly could not forget Mollie's interest. It was too near her heart to be forgotten. She must attend to Mollie's affairs first, and then she could fly to Grif and the parlor with an easy conscience. So she waited until five o'clock before dressing to go out, and then, after watching at the window for a while, she decided to go to her room and put on her hat and make all her small preparations, so that when her visitor arrived she might be ready to leave the house as soon as he did.
“It won't do to keep Grif waiting too long, even for Mollie's sake,” she said. “I must consider him, too. If Mr. Gowan does not come by six or half-past, I shall be obliged to go.”
She purposely prolonged her toilet, even though it had occupied a greater length of time than usual in the first instance. There had been a new acquisition in the shape of a dress to don, and one or two coquettish aids to appearance, which were also novelties. But before six o'clock she was quite ready, and, having nothing else to do, was reduced to the necessity of standing before the glass and taking stock of herself and her attire.
“It fits,” she soliloquized, curving her neck in her anxiety to obtain a back view of herself. “It fits like a glove, and so Grif will be sure to like it. His admiration for clothes that fit amounts to a monomania. He will make his usual ecstatic remarks on the subject of figure, too. And I must confess,” with modest self-satisfaction,—"I must confess that those frills are not unbecoming. If we were only rich—and married—how I would dress, to please him! Being possessed of a figure, one's results are never uncertain. Figure is a weakness of mine, also. With the avoirdupois of Miss Jolliboy, life would appear a desert. Ten thousand per annum would not console me. And yet she wears sables and seal-skin, and is happy. It is a singular fact, worthy of the notice of the philosopher, that it is such women who invariably possess the sable and seal-skin. Ah, well!” charitably, “I suppose it is a dispensation of Providence. When they attain that size they need some compensation.”
Often in after time she remembered the complacent little touch of vanity, and wondered how it had been possible that she could stand there, making so thoughtless and foolish a speech when danger was so near, and so much of sharp, passionate suffering was approaching her.
She had waited until the last minute, and finding, on consulting her watch, that it was past six, she decided to wait no longer. She took up her gloves from the dressing-table and drew them on; she settled the little drooping plume in her hat and picked up her muff, and then, giving a last glance and a saucy nod to the piquant reflection in the glass, she opened her bedroom door to go out.
And then it was, just at this last moment, that there came a ring at the hall-door bell,—evidently a hurried ring, and withal a ring which made her heart beat, she knew not why.