Captain Danton agreed that that was the very best thing that could be done, and soon after retired.
I went to my room, too, but not to sleep. I was too miserably anxious about the morrow. The night was lovely—bright as day and warm as midsummer. I sat by the window looking out, and saw Kate walking up and down the tamarack avenue with that mysterious Mr. Richards. They lingered there for over an hour, and then I heard them coming softly upstairs, and going to their respective rooms.
Next morning after breakfast, Captain Danton rode down to the village and had an interview with Father Francis. Two hours after, they returned to Danton Hall together, both looking pale and ill at ease. Kate and I were in the drawing-room—she practising a new song, I sewing. We both rose at their entrance—she gayly; I with my heart beating thick and fast.
"I am glad the beauty of the day tempted you out, Father Francis," she said. "I wish our wanderers would come back. Danton Hall has been as gloomy as an old bastille lately."
I don't know what Father Francis said. I know he looked as though the errand he had come to fulfil were unspeakably distasteful to him.
"Reginald ought to be home to-day," Kate said, walking to the window, "and Rose next week. It seems like a century since they went away."
I could wait for no more—I hurried out of the room—crying, I am afraid. Before I could go upstairs, Captain Danton joined me in the hall.
"Don't go," he said, hoarsely; "wait here. You may be wanted."
My heart seemed to stand still in vague apprehension of—I hardly know what. We stood there together waiting, as the few friends who loved the ill-fated Scottish Queen so well, may have stood when she laid her head on the block. I looked at that closed door with a mute terror of what was passing within—every nerve strained to hear the poor tortured girl's cry of anguish. No such cry ever came. We waited ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, half an hour, an hour, before that closed door opened. We shrank away, but it was only Father Francis, very pale and sad. Our eyes asked the question our tongues would not utter.
"She knows all," he said, in a tremulous voice; "she has taken it very quietly—too quietly. She has alarmed me—that unnatural calm is more distressing than the wildest outburst of weeping."