"Good-night," he answered, and gave back the smile. Then he went quickly down the path and away.
Ten minutes afterward she put out the light in the front room, and stole out of the door, leaving it open behind her. Still in the white gown of the evening, but with a long, dark cloak flung over it, she went swiftly back over the paths to the garden bench. Arrived there she sat down upon it, where she had sat before, but not as she had been. Instead, she turned and laid her arm along the low back of the bench, and her head upon it, and remained motionless in that position for a long time. Her eyes were wide, in the darkness, and her lips were pressed tight together, and once, just once, a smothered, struggling breath escaped her. But, finally, she sat up, threw up her head, lifted both arms above it, the hands clenched tight.
"Charlotte Ruston," she whispered fiercely, "you have to be strong—and strong—and stronger yet! You have to be! You have to be!"
Then she rose quickly to her feet, with a motion not unlike that with which John Leaver had sprung to his an hour before. It was a movement which meant that emotion must yield to action. She went swiftly back to the house, in at the door, up the straight, high stairs to her room.
As she lighted her candle a voice spoke from Madam Chase's room, its door open into her own.
"Charlotte?"
"Yes, Granny?"
The girl went in, taking the candle, which she set upon the dressing-table. She bent over the bed, putting her lips close to the old lady's ear.
"Can't you sleep, dear?" she asked.
"Not until you are in, child. Why are you so late?"