Dorothy looked up. To his astonishment she sprang to her feet and clasped him about the neck, burying her face on his shoulder. She began to say something into his ear, laughing and crying at the same time, so that all he was at length able to gather was that she didn't regret the close call at all, for it had shown her—had shown her—
Julius had not seen Ridge Jordan make his move to spring from the car, but he had felt it—felt Ridge's hand strike his shoulder, his knee hit his back. He had not taken in its meaning at the instant, but when he had turned about and seen Ridge sitting stiffly facing ahead it came to him what had happened at the crisis. He had wondered whether Dot had seen it. Now he knew. Not that she said it. In fact, she said nothing intelligible, but she held her brother tight before she sent him away; and somehow he understood that Fate had helped him to show Dorothy her "real man."
Somehow she had known that Waldron would write. It was impossible to recall his face and not know that he was a man of action. He would not go away for six months and leave behind him only a memory to hold her thoughts to his. She wondered only when his letter would come.
Four times a day the postman was accustomed to leave the mail in an interesting heap upon the table in Mrs. Jack Elliot's hall. Dorothy, from the very morning after the trip to Saxifrage Inn, had found herself scanning the pile with a curious sense of anticipation. She wondered what Waldron's handwriting was like. She recalled his workmanlike little figures upon the blackboard, and made up her mind that his penmanship would be of a similar character, compact and regular. Another man would have sent her flowers before he sailed. Instinctively she knew that Waldron would not do this; she did not expect nor wish it. But he would write—unquestionably. How would he write? That was the question which made her pulses thrill.
It was some time before the letter came, as she had guessed it would be. He had written on shipboard, and the letter came back to her from Greater Inagua, the first West Indian island at which his ship had touched. Coming in one September evening from a long walk through the hazy air, its breath fragrant with the peculiar pungent odour of distant forest fires, Dorothy found the letter on the hall table. She knew it was his before she saw the postmark; recognized, as if she had often seen it, the clean cut, regular lettering, the mark of the man of exactness and order, of the well-trained mind. Her heart leaped at sight of it, a heart which had never before really leaped at sight of any man's handwriting. She picked up the letter and went away upstairs with it to her room. Here she locked the door.
She placed the letter upon her dressing-table and studied its envelope while she removed her dress, brushed and arranged her hair, and put on the frock she intended to wear for the evening; she was going with Tom Wendell to a small dance at the home of a special friend. She did not open the letter, but left it, unopened, propped up against a little pink silk pincushion, giving it one last glance as she switched off the light before closing the door. On the evening of the Clifford-Jordan wedding Ridgeway Jordan, brother of the bride and best man to the bridegroom, had offered himself in marriage to the maid of honour, Dorothy Broughton. She had done her best to prevent him, but he had reached such a stage of despairing passion that he could no longer be managed and did the deed at a moment when she could not escape. Being gently but firmly refused, he had declared his life to be irretrievably ruined and immediately after the wedding had flung himself out of town, vowing that she should not be bothered with the sight of the work her hands had wrought. When another long-time friend, Thomas Wendell, seized the opportunity of Ridge's absence to further his own claims to Dorothy's preferment, she, profiting by painful experience, had somehow made it clear to him that only comradeship was in her thoughts. Even on these tacit terms Wendell was eager to serve as escort whenever she would allow it.
On this September evening he was on hand early and bore her away with ill-concealed satisfaction. "I say," he observed suddenly in the pause of a waltz, "did you happen to have a fortune left you to-day?"
"Why, Tommy?" Dorothy's face grew instantly sober.
"Oh, don't turn off the illumination. I'm sorry I spoke. It was only that you somehow seemed—well, not exactly unhappy to-night, and I couldn't get at the cause. I should like to flatter myself that I'm the cause, but I know better."
"I must be a gloomy person ordinarily if there seems any change to-night. Don't be foolish, Thomas; I've had no fortune left me; I never shall have."