It was Dorothy! Not the Dorothy who had bidden him good-by a year ago, but a new, a statelier Dorothy, a Dorothy with the stamp of travel and society upon her, a Dorothy who had learned ease and self-possession and dignity by habit in the grandest drawing rooms in all the world. Yet the old Dorothy was there too—the Dorothy of straight-looking eyes and perfect truthfulness, and for the moment the new Dorothy forgot herself, giving place to the old.
“Oh, Master!” she cried, impulsively seizing both his hands, and, completely forgetful of the crowd about her, letting the glad tears slip out between her eyelashes. “I was not looking at the soldiers; I was looking for you, and wondering when you would come. Oh, I am so happy, and so glad!”
An instant later the new Dorothy reasserted herself, and Arthur did not at all like the change. The girl became so far self-conscious as to grow dignified, and in very shame over her impulsive outbreak, she exaggerated her dignity and her propriety of demeanor into something like coldness and stately hauteur.
“How you have grown!” Arthur exclaimed when he had led her to one of the parlors almost deserted now for the sight-seeing vantage ground of the bridge.
“No,” she answered as she might have done in a New York or a Paris drawing room, addressing some casual acquaintance. “I have not grown a particle. I was quite grown up before I left Virginia. It is a Paris gown, perhaps. The Parisian dressmakers know all the art of bringing out a woman’s ‘points,’ and they hold my height and my slenderness to be my best claims upon attention.”
Arthur felt as if she had struck him. He was about to remonstrate, when Edmonia broke in upon the conversation with her greeting. But Dorothy had seen his face and read all that it expressed. The old Dorothy was tempted to ask his forgiveness; the new Dorothy dismissed the thought as quite impossible. She had already sufficiently “compromised” herself by her impulsiveness, and to make amends she put stays upon her dignity and throughout the evening they showed no sign of bending.
Arthur was tortured by all this. Edmonia was delighted over it. So differently do a man and a woman sometimes interpret another woman’s attitude and conduct.
Arthur was compelled to leave them at nine to meet Governor Letcher, who had summoned him for consultation with respect to the organization of a surgical staff, of which he purposed to make Arthur Brent one of the chiefs. Before leaving he asked as to Edmonia’s and Dorothy’s home-going plans. Learning that they intended to go by the eight o’clock train the next morning, he said:
“Very well, I’ll send Dick up by the midnight train to have the Wyanoke carriage at the station to meet you.”
“Is Dick with you?” Dorothy asked with more of enthusiasm than she had shown since her outbreak on the bridge. “How I do want to see Dick! Can’t you send him here before train time, please?”