"Demon! Good Demon!" she called softly. "Steady, old boy. Come here."
Slowly the fire died out of his gleaming eyes and he approached warily, step by step, while her own eyes held his unwaveringly. He sniffed at her hand, gazed up at her in mute question and reading confidence and mastery in her face, dropped obediently in the snow at her feet.
The wave of relief which swept over her was checked by a fresh disquieting thought. Was the dog merely guarding her until his keeper appeared to relieve him of his charge? The slightest movement on her part might bring him up with a spring at her throat, but to wait until help came would mean the discovery of her disobedience.
Chance solved the problem for her before many minutes had passed. A shrill whistle sounded from the direction of the garage, and the dog, lifting his head, gave tongue in response. The whistle was repeated, followed by a hoarse, blasphemous command. Demon rose reluctantly, brushed against her knee in friendly farewell, and loped away in the fast-gathering darkness.
"Oh, Demon!" The girl breathed a sobbing little cry after him. "Remember me well, the sound of my voice and the scent of me. Sometime I may need you!"
Then ashamed of the momentary, hysterical weakness, Betty turned and fairly flew to the house. Slipping in at the side door by which she had left, she reached her room, breathless, but unobserved, and sank into a chair.
The house was oddly silent. No sound of voices had met her ears, but a narrow streak of light had shone from under the library door as she passed, and her overwrought imagination pictured for her a tense, constrained group within. In spite of Mrs. Atterbury's specious explanation, Betty knew beyond question whose voice had come to her over the telephone, and no mere financial crisis could have brought to Wolvert's face the look which she had seen upon it when he unwittingly crossed her path among the trees.
A half-hour went slowly by and then the whirring of the electric brougham broke the stillness and droned diminishingly into the distance. Mme. Cimmino had evidently taken her belated departure. Had Wolvert accompanied her? Betty shrank from encountering him at dinner and the effort to meet his forced banter serenely, conscious of what lay beneath it seemed beyond her power.
When she obeyed the gong's summons, however, she found the table laid only for two, and Mrs. Atterbury already in her place.
"You enjoyed your walk, my dear?" The latter raised imperturbable eyes to greet the girl. "You did not find it too cold?"