Her lips parted and there was a hunted look in her eyes as she looked sharply round for a way of retreat.
“He is coming here,” she said in a hurried whisper, and she glided toward a folding screen between her and one of the great book cases; but before she reached it the plainly heard steps ceased, and she knew that they were hushed on the thickly carpeted stairs.
“Gone to his father’s room,” she said with a sigh of relief, and walking back to the chair, she rested one elbow upon it and let her face drop down upon her hand, her tears welling forth, and one glistening between her white fingers in the soft light.
“No—no—no,” she said quietly. “It cannot be now. It is all a painful dream. All that is dead.”
She tried to picture in her mind Isabel in the drawing room playing the last chords of the familiar old air, and then leaving the music stool to join her there, but another figure forced itself to the front, and she saw the dark form of Neil Elthorne as vividly as if she were watching him from close at hand. She could picture him passing along the corridor, then opening the chamber door, to see him more plainly as the soft light from the room shone out like a golden glow, and lit up his pale, thoughtful face. Then she seemed to see him close the door, cross the room, and go to his old seat beside the couch. And how familiar that attitude had become, as he bent forward to take and hold his father’s hand.
She was mentally gazing on father and son when the scene changed, and once more there was the old man’s flushed and distorted face, with the veins starting and eyes wild with anger as he realised that his long cherished plans had been so rudely overset.
The scene was very plain to her imagination. There, too, were the handsome, masculine looking sisters, whose eyes flashed at her scornfully, as she saw herself standing there, pale and shrinking, in her plain black dress, and then meeting Ralph Elthorne’s searching gaze. She remembered her effort to be firm and yet how she had trembled in dread of the man’s fierce anger. And without cause, for from that moment he had spoken differently to her, he had grown more kind and gentle; in fact, there had been times when she had fancied in her dread and shrinking that his words even sounded fatherly.
It might be imagination, she knew, but his manner had ended in evoking thoughts which had grown stronger than ever that night, and over which she brooded now.
Minute after minute passed unnoticed as she stood in the old library, and she gave quite a start, and her hand fell to her side, as a door opened again, and this time she heard voices.
“Has Isabel forgotten me?” she said to herself, as steps crossed the marble floor again, another door was opened and closed, and she stood listening and expectant.