Greatly alarmed at the account given of Gertie, Edith had come at once to take her home, if possible; but this neither the doctor nor myself thought advisable. It was better for her to remain quietly where she was for a few days, and so the carriage returned without her, Edith promising to come again the next morning and see how she was.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE COURSE OF LOVE DOES NOT RUN SMOOTH.
Just before leaving, Godfrey went to Gertie, and, bending over her whispered a few words so low that no one heard them except the one for whom they were intended, and whose eye brightened as he said:
“Good-by, darling. I must go now, but shall come early to-morrow morning.”
He was holding her hand, and he noticed the absence of the ring and the scratch the stone had made when it was wrenched away. Instantly a cloud passed over his face and he looked searchingly at Gertie, but she knew nothing; and then he glanced at me.
“Ettie, if you find anything of value about Gertie’s person, or on the floor, keep it till I come again,” he said; and then I knew he meant the ring, and was puzzled more than ever.
Should I tell him where it was. No; he would see it for himself, I decided, as he went out from the room and joined his father and the ladies at the door.
Alice’s gloves were ruined, and she stood holding my water-proof around her with the bare hand on which the gem was shining. But Godfrey did not see it until he helped her into the carriage, when the stone pressed hard against his hand, making him start as if he had been stung, or, rather, as if that ring on Alice’s finger had riveted anew the fetters he had been so glad to break. How came she by it, and what did it mean? Surely not that he was hers again. A thousand times no, when he remembered the mighty love for another surging through his veins and making him so wildly happy. He was honorably free. Alice had made him so herself, and even his father could not gainsay that or think the Schuyler reputation for honor compromised in the least. A man could not marry a woman who would not marry him, who had told him so with angry words and biting sarcasms. Godfrey was in high spirits, and his manner was not like that of one who has been so near to death. He could even joke with Robert and Emma, and would have rallied Alice on her forlorn and bedraggled appearance when she came to him on the shore, if he had not remembered the scene which had followed that coming, when the ring of betrothal was hurled at him so fiercely. How it flashed and shone upon her hand, which, it seemed to him, was continually thrust upon his sight, now on the table, now on the back of the chair, now on the mantel,—everywhere he turned his eyes there was the restless hand and the diamond sparkling on it, and seeming to say to him that his freedom was not so sure. At last, when he could bear the sight no longer, he sauntered away to his father’s present business-room, where he sat down alone to think of Gertie, and wonder if it would be greatly out of place for him to go and inquire for her that night instead of waiting till morning.
And while he sat thinking there was a knock upon the door, and Alice came in with a grieved look in her face and tears in her eyes, as she said: