The whole second floor of the little hotel had been reserved for the directors' party, and among the rooms was the parlor. There Glover called regularly every evening on Mr. Brock, who, somewhat at a loss to understand the young man's interest, excused himself after the first few minutes and left Gertrude to entertain the gentleman who had been so kind to everybody that she could not be discourteous even if he was somewhat tedious.
One night after a particularly happy evening near the piano for Gertrude and Glover, Mr. Brock, re-entering the parlor, found the somewhat tedious gentleman bending very low, as his daughter said good-night, over her hand; in fact, the gentleman that had been so kind to everybody was kissing it.
When Glover recovered his perpendicular the cold magnate of the West End stood between the folding doors looking directly at him. If the owner of several trunk lines expected his look to inspire consternation he was disappointed. Each of the lovers feared but one person in the world; that was the other. Gertrude, with perhaps an extra touch of dignity, put her compromised hand to her belt for her handkerchief. Glover finished the sentence he was in the middle of—"If I am not ordered out. Good-night."
But when Mr. Brock had turned abruptly on his heel and disappeared between the portières they certainly did look at one another.
"Have I got you into trouble now?" murmured Glover, penitently. Uneasiness was apparent in her expression, but with her back to the piano Gertrude stood steadfast.
"Not," she said, with serious tenderness, "just now. Don't you know? It was the first, the very first, day you looked into my eyes, dear, that you got me into trouble."
Her pathetic sweetness moved him. Then he flamed with determination. He would take the burden on himself—would face her father at once, but she hushed him in real alarm and said, that battle she must fight unaided; it was after all only a little one, she whispered, after the one she had fought with herself. But he knew she glossed over her anxiety, for when he withdrew her eyes looked tears though they shed none.
In the morning there were two vacancies at the breakfast table; neither Gertrude nor her father appeared. When Glover returned to the hotel at five o'clock the first person he saw was Mrs. Whitney. She and Marie, with the doctor and Allen Harrison, had arrived on the first train out of the Springs in four days, and Mrs. Whitney's greeting of Glover in the office was disconcerting. It scarcely needed Gertrude's face at dinner, as she tried to brave the storm that had set in, or her reluctant admission when she saw him as she passed up to her room that she and her father had been up nearly the whole of the night before, to complete his depression.
Every effort he made during the evening to speak to Gertrude was balked by some untoward circumstance, but about nine o'clock they met on the parlor floor and Glover led her to the elevator, which was being run that night by Solomon Battershawl. Solomon lifted them to the top floor and made busy at the end of the hall while they had five short minutes. When they descended he knew what she was facing. Even Marie, the one friend he thought he had in the family, had taken a stand against them, and her father was deaf to every appeal.
They parted, depressed, with only a hand pressure, a look and a whisper of constancy. At midnight, as Glover lay thinking, a crew caller rapped at his door. He brought a message and held his electric pocket-lamp near, while Glover, without getting up, read the telegram. It was from Bucks asking if he could take a rotary at once into the Heart Mountains.