They missed the car, as a matter of course, and had to wait on the street corner. Whereupon Antrim drew his companion into a sheltered doorway and refused to be kept longer in ignorance and suspense.
“For pity’s sake, tell me, Dorothy, what did he say? I’m on tenter-hooks, and it seemed as if you would never come out.”
“He didn’t do it, Harry. He is innocent,” she began triumphantly, and Antrim could see her eyes shining behind the veil.
“I have known that all along,” he interrupted impatiently. “What then? What about the papers?”
“Oh, dear, I forgot all about them! I can’t talk about it, Harry; not here in the street. But there is one thing I must tell you”—the hot blush came again and its attendant emotion threatened to stop her, but she went on bravely—“it is about—Mr. Brant and—and Isabel. I was just dreadfully, horridly, stupidly mistaken. Isabel meant—that is, it’s not Mr. Brant; it is somebody else. There is nothing at all between them, and there never has been. I——”
Antrim waited to hear no more. There was an idle carriage standing at the curb, and before she knew what he meant to do he had put her into it, slammed the door, and swung himself up to a seat beside the driver.
“To Judge Langford’s house, over in the Highlands. I’ll show you the way if you don’t know it,” he said briefly; and then, “The quicker you make it the more money you’ll earn.”
In an incredibly short time he was helping Dorothy out at the Hollywood gate. “Fix it some way so that I can have ten minutes alone with Isabel,” he begged as they hurried up the walk, “and then I’ll be ready to hear all about Brant. You will do that much for me, won’t you, Dorothy?”
Fortunately, it needed not to be arranged. Isabel met them in the hall, and Dorothy had but to dart quickly into the library and so leave them alone together. Two weeks of utter neglect had humbled Isabel rather more than she would admit even to herself, but they had also made her affectionately vindictive. Hence she gave him no more than a cool little “Good evening, Harry. Won’t you come in?”
“I am in; and I’ll stay to dinner if you will ask me,” he retorted promptly, penning her into the corner between the door and the stairfoot. “But first I want to say something that I am going to repeat every time we meet, regardless of time, place, or present company. I love you, Isabel, I have always loved you, and I am always going to.”