CHAPTER IX
When Mrs. Van Rensselaer came down stairs a half-hour later she found Charles in the parlor anxiously awaiting her coming. Her face was bland and encouraging. She tried to smile, though smiles were foreign to her nature.
"Well," she said, seating herself and signing to the young man to take a chair opposite her, "she is naturally very much shocked."
"Of course she would be," said Charles, somewhat sadly, and waited.
"I think, as I said, it will take her a few hours to become adjusted to the new state of things, and it would not be well for you to see her to-night. There will be plenty of time in the morning. The hour was set late, so that all the relatives could arrive, you know. She will undoubtedly accept your proposal, but you must give her a little time."
"You think she will?" asked the young man, brightening. "Oh, that is good! Certainly I can wait until morning. Poor little girl, it must be very hard for her!"
A hard glitter in his hostess's eye did not encourage conversation along these lines, and he soon excused himself to go and meet his father, who had gone to the inn to see that the rest of the family were comfortable for the night.
The household settled to quiet at last, but it was like the sullen silence before a storm.
A heavy burden had fallen upon Mr. Van Rensselaer. He seemed to be arraigned before his first wife's searching eyes, for the trouble that had befallen their child. He could not get away from the vision of her dead face.
His wife spent the night in feverish planning for the morning, a fiendish determination in her heart to be rid of her step-daughter, no matter to what she had to resort in order to compass it.