Clearly it would be better to await Evelyn’s return to Wyanoke, and trust to good luck to open some possible way. At any rate, he might there approach the subject in indirect ways; while if he could have ridden over to Branton for the express purpose of having a conference with her, no such indirection would have been possible. His very going to her there would have been a declaration of some purpose which he must promptly explain.
Obviously, therefore, it was better that he should not go to Branton, but should await such opportunity as good fortune might give him after Evelyn’s return to Wyanoke. But that necessity postponed the outcome, and Kilgariff was in a mood to be impatient of delay, particularly as every hour consciously intensified his own love, and rendered him less and less capable of saying nay to his passion.
With her woman’s quickness of perception, Dorothy shrewdly guessed what was going on in his mind, and she rejoiced in it. But she made no reference to the matter, even in the most remotely indirect way. She simply went about her tasks with a pleased and amused smile on her face.
XXVIII
EVELYN’S BOOK, CONCLUDED
WHEN Dorothy took up Evelyn’s manuscript again, it was nine o’clock in the evening of the second day, and, moved by her eagerness to follow the story, even more than by her conscientious desire to finish it before the author’s return on the morrow, she read late into the night. But she had sent Evelyn a note in the late afternoon, in which she had written:—
My Evelyn is not to fail in her promise to come back to me to-morrow. I have not yet completed the reading of the manuscript, though I hope to do so to-night, if a late vigil shall enable me to accomplish that purpose. I have asked Arthur to let me sleep in the nursery to-night, if I finish the reading in time to sleep at all. So I can sit up as late as I please without fear of disturbing him. Poor fellow, he is working too hard and thinking too hard even for his magnificent strength.