Kit stood for a few moments on the steps, his head thrown back, the sunshine on his face. He looked radiant but stunned.
“I didn’t think she’d make it!” he said aloud. “I was sure when I saw Peter sitting here she hadn’t made it. Gracious, but I am glad! Anne will be glad. I must call and tell her.”
Anne received Kit’s message at her boarding place. She hurried her breakfast and went to Latham Street earlier than usual to take the joyful news there.
Richard Latham received it as a twice-told tale, not the less welcome.
“The dear little thing!” he said. “But I felt sure that she was safe. The first thing I thought when I wakened was that little Anne was all right. But it is joyful to be confirmed by certainty. How glad you are! I can feel the happiness radiating from you like an electric current!”
“Indeed I am happy!” cried Anne. “I love the child, but it’s not that alone. That is such a dear family, so simple, so united, so loving that I couldn’t endure the thought of their loss of little Anne. Though perhaps it would have been better to let her slip away to the heaven she’s so fond of talking about.”
“Nonsense!” said Richard, briskly. “That’s a morbid, wrong notion. Life is a gift. A wicked life is the gift thrown away, but do you really think there is great danger of little Anne’s conscience ever abandoning her to a misspent life—or of her abandoning her conscience, more correctly? Anne’s conscience is as intrinsic to her as her heart, or any other vital organ! She’ll be a good woman. So I’m mighty glad she’s to live to make a happier world, as her mother has done. How good it will be to have her around again! How did you hear about her?”
“Kit Carrington telephoned me. Peter Berkley had been there to tell Kit, and he knew that I—we—would be eager to hear,” said Anne.
“Ah! Well, that was kind of him; we were eager to hear,” said Richard. Anne did not see his face; he turned and left the room as he spoke, but she heard the change in his voice that answered to a drooping body.
“You do not feel too perturbed to work to-day?” Richard suggested when Anne followed him to the living room a few minutes later. There was no note of regret in his voice now.