It was so late when Katy sought her own couch that she soon dropped into a deep sleep. This Dorothy had watched for with the greatest impatience. She soon rose, robed herself in a dark dress and Katy's long cloak, and was soon ready for the great undertaking which she had mapped out for herself.
Hastily writing a note, she placed it where Katy's eyes would be sure to fall upon it early the next morning; then she stole quietly from the room. The great clock in the corridor below struck three as she passed it with bated breath and trembling in every limb.
She opened the door softly and stole out into the chill, raw night.
There was no one in this wide world to miss her, no one to care what became of her! She was in every one's way. Only one thought suggested itself to her—to end it all. Perhaps Harry Kendal would feel very sorry when the news came to him on the morrow that she was dead—she whom he had spurned so cruelly only the night before. And perhaps he would throw himself beside her cold, dead body and wish that he had been less cruel to her, and cry out:
"Oh, if God would but roll back His universe and give me yesterday!"
She had no fixed destination, but walked on and on, until she suddenly found herself down by the Yonkers Boat Club House, that stretched its dark shadow afar out into the river. It was connected with the shore by a long, narrow plank walk.
Mechanically Dorothy crept down the narrow, winding stairway that led to it. Midway on the plank walk she paused, clung desperately to the rail and looked fearfully down into the dark, flowing river that rushed on so madly but a few feet below her.
Only a few flickering stars would see and know all, she told herself. There would be but a plunge, a deathly shiver as her warm body came in contact with the icy waves, a moment of choking, a terrible sensation, then all would be over—her troubles would be at an end!
What cared she for the wealth of a hundred Gray Gables and princely estates when love's boon was denied her?
Even in that hour and in that weird place she thought of the words another heart-broken girl had uttered long years before: