“No.” She shook her head. “If what you say is true, then I think there is more reason than ever that I should see Captain Grail.”
With an air of determination, she leaned once more toward Mrs. Schilder, who had discreetly turned her eyes away during the colloquy, and was gazing out over the side of the car. “I am afraid the major must consider me very self-willed,” she said, “but I am going to ask you again if I may not be driven to the post?”
Her hostess immediately bent forward to give the desired order to the chauffeur, and, despite Appleby’s fuming, the car was whirled around and headed for the new destination. Back down Carney Street they sped, past the courthouse and city hall, and finally reached the fort.
Inquiry having developed that Grail was in his office at headquarters, the major, with an air of stern virtue, prepared to conduct Meredith to him; but again Mrs. Schilder suavely interposed.
“Perhaps Miss Vedant would prefer to see the adjutant alone,” she said, laying a detaining hand on Appleby’s arm.
Meredith gave her a quick glance of gratitude, and assuring them both that she needed no one with her during the interview, hurried on through the door.
A moment later Grail was awakened by the announcement, “A lady to see you, sir,” and he rose up, blinking and confused, to find her standing before him.
“You?” he cried in amazement, for he had never dreamed that Appleby and the crowd would permit her to come near such a pariah as himself. “You, Meredith!”
Ormsby Grail had dreamed dreams centering about this fair-haired, slender daughter of his colonel. He had seen her blossom from the child he had once taken on his knee into a charming woman, and learned to love her. But he had refrained from whispering any word of his love to her. She was too young, he told himself; she could not possibly know her own mind. Even when it was decided that she should go to Chicago for a year to cultivate her remarkable voice, he still had not ventured to speak. He would wait a little longer, he decided. She seemed to him no more than a child.
So, although he wrote to her frequently, in a friendly, brotherly sort of fashion, and never let a week go by without some remembrance from him, he sedulously concealed from her the real state of his feelings—or thought he did—and never dared visit her in Chicago.