She glanced apologetically toward her companion, and then back wistfully to the secretary.
"Nobody been in this morning but that man," said the secretary still ungraciously, indicating with a sweep of her capable white hand the legs in the alcove surmounted by the newspaper.
Daisy's mother gave a quick frightened glance toward the alcove without realizing that those legs had often been a familiar sight in her house. She retreated half frightened to the chair Mrs. Dunlap smilingly offered, and the two women sank down quietly with two magazines that Mrs. Dunlap produced from the window seat. Again the click of the typewriter was the only sound that was heard.
The postman came in presently and left a great stack of mail which gave the secretary a rest from her typing while she went resolutely through the letters, sorting them into piles.
There were many footsteps going down the corridor now, and the three whose hearts were listening for a certain step, could not be certain at all. The mother started nervously whenever any one approached the door.
The elevator was clanging incessantly. Presently a nervous step came down the corridor, almost breathlessly, as if the owner had hurried, then hesitated a moment in front of the door. The knob turned, slowly, almost timidly.
Somehow Whitney knew that step—knew in his heart that she had come at last, and felt the horror that would be in her white face as she discovered the name she had come to disprove shining golden in the noonday light. The paper in his hand trembled and he dared to peer around it at the little white frightened, almost belligerent face of the girl he loved.
She stood in the doorway for an instant and swept the room with her glance, not carefully for she was too nervous, and she was not looking for people from home. Whitney was at one side, almost behind her now, for she was standing in the middle of the room wide-eyed, and she had scarcely noticed the backs of the two women shrinking into their chairs in the window corner earnestly reading magazines.
She went straight up to the desk and her voice trembled a little as she asked her questions.
"Is this Mr. R. H. Oliver's office?"