“And there was that other encounter at the chapel porch. Neither you nor I had the slightest business there. I admit my own culpability.”
She colored again.
“But you spoke as though you understood what you must have heard there. It is important for me to know. I have a right to know just what you meant by that warning.”
Real distress showed in her face for an instant. The agent and his helpers rushed the last baggage down the platform, and the rails hummed their warning of the approaching train.
“I was eavesdropping on my own account,” she said hurriedly and with a note of finality. “I was there by intention, and”—there was another hint of the tam-o’-shanter in the mirth that seemed to bubble for a moment in her throat—“it’s too bad you didn’t see me, for I had on my prettiest gown, and the fog wasn’t good for it. But you know as much of what was said there as I do. You are a man, and I have heard that you have had some experience in taking care of yourself, Mr. Glenarm.”
“To be sure; but there are times—”
“Yes, there are times when the odds seem rather heavy. I have noticed that myself.”
She smiled, but for an instant the sad look came into her eyes,—a look that vaguely but insistently suggested another time and place.
“I want you to come back,” I said boldly, for the train was very near, and I felt that the eyes of the Sisters were upon us. “You can not go away where I shall not find you!”
I did not know who this girl was, her home, or her relation to the school, but I knew that her life and mine had touched strangely; that her eyes were blue, and that her voice had called to me twice through the dark, in mockery once and in warning another time, and that the sense of having known her before, of having looked into her eyes, haunted me. The youth in her was so luring; she was at once so frank and so guarded,—breeding and the taste and training of an ampler world than that of Annandale were so evidenced in the witchery of her voice, in the grace and ease that marked her every motion, in the soft gray tone of hat, dress and gloves, that a new mood, a new hope and faith sang in my pulses. There, on that platform, I felt again the sweet heartache I had known as a boy, when spring first warmed the Vermont hillsides and the mountains sent the last snows singing in joy of their release down through the brook-beds and into the wakened heart of youth.