On the day after Marsten’s failure to win a majority of the men to his side in the strike controversy, the young man went to Wimbledon, hoping to find consolation for his defeat in the company of the girl he loved. He felt that he was perhaps taking a rather unfair advantage of Sartwell in thus making a clandestine appointment with his daughter, but he justified himself, as lovers have always justified themselves, by claiming that a man was a fool to lose a trick when he had the card in his hand to take it. It was evident that Sartwell had no objection to the visits of Barnard Hope, and that he would be quite willing to have his daughter marry the son of his employer. If Marsten had known this the day before, he would not have been so self-denying as to refuse to see Edna Sartwell, and now that fate had interposed in his behalf, giving him the knowledge that he had a rival, he was not going to be idiot enough to throw away his chance.
He entered the vacant plot surrounding the empty house, and looked anxiously along the glass-topped wall for the signal that Edna had promised, under compulsion, to display. It was not in sight. He wondered if, after all, the girl had told her father of his visit. Let Sartwell get but the slightest inkling of it, and Marsten was certain the whole particulars would soon be within the manager’s knowledge.
He wandered up and down the wrong side of the wall disconsolately, not knowing what to do. Once he paused near where he had, on the previous day, jumped over. He thought he heard a slight cough on the other side. It might be a warning, or an invitation: the question was, which? She must know that he would be there, waiting for her signal; or perhaps—the thought was bitter—she might have forgotten all about him.
At the further end of the garden was a park fence, lower than the forbidding stone wall, which it joined at right angles. As anything is better than suspense, the young man resolved to take the risk of reconnoitering. He mounted the park fence and peered over the wall, but the trees and shrubbery were so thick that he could not see whether any one was in Sart-well’s garden or not; even the house was hidden from his view. Faint heart never climbed a stone wall: Marsten hesitated but a moment, seized a branch of an overhanging tree, pulled himself up to the top, chancing the glass, and leaped down among the shrubbery on the other side. He listened intently for a while, but there was no sound; then he moved cautiously through the bushes to the open space under the trees where he had talked with her the day before. No one was there, but he caught his breath as he saw a red-silk scarf hanging over the back of one of the chairs. She had at least thought of him, for that was undoubtedly the unused signal.
He was now in a greater quandary than he had been on the other side of the wall. She had apparently intended to throw the scarf over the broken glass, otherwise why had she brought it to their rendezvous; but, as she had not given the signal agreed upon, might there not be a danger that her father was at home? The young man knit his brows as he pondered on what explanation he would give Sartwell if he were discovered standing under the trees.
Marsten had half made up his mind to return by the way he came, when he saw Edna approaching from the house. The girl held out her hand to him with a smile that went to his heart, but her words were not so reassuring.
“I was watching for you,” she said, “hoping you would not come.”
“Hoping I would not come?” echoed Marsten, with a suggestion of dismay in his tone.
“At least hoping you would not come, except by the gate. I don’t like this. It seems secret and mean—as if we were doing something we were ashamed of. Now, we may not accomplish much good, talking about the strike, but we are certainly not doing anything either of us would fear to have the whole world know. There is no reason, now that your plans of yesterday have failed, why you should not have come to the front door like any other visitor, is there?”
“I suppose not.”