“Believe me, dearest,” replied the other, “it was a mistake, and one which grows more serious the longer it is kept up.”
“O, I could not tell him,” returned Alice with a little air of determination; “but, grannie, dear, don’t-ee scare me like that.”
And so the matter had ended for that time, and fair Alice’s opportunity was lost forevermore.
When Mr. Montgomery arrived by the eight o’clock train and found no one to meet him, a dull feeling of apprehension crept into his heart. His first thought was, “Can my darling be sick? She is in very delicate health.”
With hasty steps he sped on his homeward way, denouncing the special business which on that particular day had detained him.
“I’m glad I thought to buy the ring during the day and did not leave it till after business, or I should either have lost the last train or had to come home without the ring.”
Entering the house unseen, by the side door, he glanced through the empty reception rooms, noted the vacant dining-room, and then hastened upstairs to his wife’s apartments, only, however, to find these silent and deserted.
A feeling of uneasiness and oppression took possession of him. “Where can everybody be?” he muttered. “Ah! there are grandpa and grandma coming across the fields, but where is Alice?”
Hastily glancing across the grounds from the window of his wife’s boudoir, he caught a glimpse in the gathering dusk of feminine apparel at the end of the long peach walk. The light was too uncertain, the distance too great, and the foliage too thick for accurate observation, but it appeared to him that some member of the household, probably one of the maids, was keeping a somewhat late appointment out of doors, for, with the aid of a pair of opera-glasses taken from the adjoining table, he could discern the dark outline of a man’s dress in close proximity to the other and more flowing garment.
Presently the two figures parted, and in the person of the female now hurrying down the peach walk toward the house, the astonished husband recognized his wife.