"My dear, four hours isn't much," I reminded her.
"Four hours is a lifetime," she said.
She stared, positively with tears in her eyes, at her pretty reflection in the glass. "I don't know how I shall get through this evening," she said.
I don't know how we all did; but it passed somehow, although it did not pass gaily. Hugh was too young and honest to hide with any success the care that harassed him; his glum face at the head of the dinner-table was discouraging to the most persistent cheerfulness. Mrs Mavor did her best, but she was ill at ease, and, as must have been patent to all, strongly disinclined to talk of to-morrow's event. To Daphne, disappointed of her lover's presence and support, the gathering of the clans was an ordeal and an embarrassment.
Standing beside her when coffee was brought to her, I heard her ask of the servant if the dog-cart was yet gone to meet Mr Marston. He believed it was just upon the start, the man said.
"Let me know as soon as it goes, please," Daphne said, and presently the footman came in again with the desired intelligence.
I suppose the poor child wanted to follow in fancy the dog-cart along the silent roads and the dark lanes, beneath the starlit sky; to see it arrive at the little wayside station in time for the rush and roar of the train, dashing like a jewelled monster out of the desert of night; dashing off again, its great ruby eyes shining in its tail, into the blackness of space, having deposited the one precious item of its freight on the platform.
A half-hour before Marston could arrive Daphne slipped away. "I shall wait up for Jack," she said to her mother. "Send him, the instant he comes, to me in my sitting-room."
One by one the ladies of the party followed Daphne's example. The men went off into the smoking-room. Mrs Mavor and I were left alone. Her nervousness and excitement, suppressed hitherto, were now at fever heat. She moved about the room, pushing chairs into fresh positions, shaking their cushions, taking up and setting down, now this now that ornament, with trembling fingers pulling out and pushing in flowers in the vases, not improving their arrangement by any means.
"The question is what Hughie will do," she said for the twentieth time. "If only he would leave it alone! If he would not interfere! It has gone so far, only Heaven should intervene. You know, Hannah, we all marry men with our eyes blinded. Daphne must take her chance like the rest. Supposing it was you, Hannah; if the man was a—murderer—and you loved him, and knew that he madly loved you, would you thank anyone for coming between? You'd marry him, wouldn't you?"