Then the family knelt. How odd! Knelt down, each where he had been sitting, and the minister began to talk to God. It did not impress the visitors as prayer. They involuntarily looked around to see to whom he was talking. Laurie reddened again and dropped his face into his hands. He had met Opal's eyes and she was shaking with mirth, but somehow it affected him rawly. Suddenly he felt impelled to get to his knees. He seemed conspicuous reared up in a chair, and he slid noiselessly to the floor with a wrench of the hurt ankle that caused him to draw his brows in a frown. Opal, left alone in this room full of devout backs, grew suddenly grave. She felt almost afraid. She began to think of Saybrook Inn and the man lying there stark and dead! The man she had danced with but a week before! Dead! And for her! She cringed, and crouched down in her chair, till her beaded frock swept the polished floor in a little tinkley sound that seemed to echo all over the room, and before she knew it her fear of being alone had brought her to her knees. To be like the rest of the world—to be even more alike than anybody else in the world, that had always been her ambition. The motive of her life now brought her on her knees because others were there and she was afraid to sit above lest their God should come walking by and she should see Him and die! She did not know she put it that way to her soul, but she did, in the secret recesses of her inner dwelling.
Before they had scarcely got to their knees and while that awkward hush was yet upon them the room was filled with the soft sound of singing, started by the minister, perhaps, or was it his wife? It was unaccompanied, “Abide with me, Fast falls the eventide, the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide!” Even Laurie joined an erratic high tenor humming in on the last verse, and Opal shuddered as the words were sung, “Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes, Shine through the dark and point me to the skies.” Death was a horrible thing to her. She never wanted to be reminded of death. It was a long, long way off to her. She always drowned the thought in whatever amusement was at hand.
The song died away just in time or Opal might have screamed. She was easily wrought up. And then this strange anomoly of a girl, her young hostess, turned to her with a natural smile just as if nothing extraordinary had been going on and said:
“Now, shall we say good-night and go upstairs? I know you must be tired after your long ride, and I know father has had a hard day and would like to get the house settled for the night.”
Opal arose with a wild idea of screaming and running away, but she caught the twinkle of Laurie's eyes and knew he was laughing at her. So she relaxed into her habitual languor, and turning haughtily requested:
“Would you send your maid to the cyar for my bag, please?”
Before anyone could respond the minister stepped to the door with a courteous “Certainly,” and presently returned with a great blue leather affair with silver mountings, and himself carried it up the stairs.
At the head of the stairs Marilyn met him, and put her head on his shoulder hiding her face in his coat, and murmured, “Oh, Daddy!”
Severn smoothed her soft hair and murmured gently: “There, there little girl! Pray! Pray! Our Father knows what's best!” but neither of them were referring to the matter of the unwelcome guests.
Mrs. Severn was solicitous about asking if there was anything the guest would like, a glass of milk, or some fruit? And Opal declined curtly, made a little moue at Shafton and followed up the stairs.