“I will—presently,” and he leaned back on the pillow, still holding the wine in his hand.
She waited, lingered, but he dallied with the glass, almost driving her wild with impatience.
Eager to be gone, and believing that he had already taken a fatal dose, she said, presently:
“May I set down the glass for you and go, grandpapa?”
“Yes, go; but never mind the wine. I will sip it at my leisure,” he answered; and in her impatience she took him at his word, and flitted out with a ghastly smile, thinking:
“He will finish it, every drop, before he puts it down, and probably die before any one else comes into the room. There will be no suspicion of the cause of death, and they will call it heart failure.”
In the hall she encountered a maid-servant, and said carelessly:
“Hattie, go up stairs and bring down the little satchel inside my door. I am taking my dahlia silk to the village to be altered.”
Five minutes later she was driving along the road to the post-office, a dazzling vision that every one turned out to see in her elegant attire and natty equipage.
Half a score of obsequious young men darted out of the post-office to hand her from her carriage, and her dazzling smile thrilled them all day like wine.