"Doesn't she?" he asked, his face lighting with a melancholy relief.
"Good symptom for you, ain't it? And I can't think of nothing else that can be on her mind. But how that girl passes her days, I don't know. It must be dull for her, poor little bird. She and Mrs. Markham ain't much apart. She looks at Mrs. Markham like a dog looks at his master, she's that fond of her. Seems to read a lot, and twice they've been out in the evening—theater, or so the chauffeur said. We don't have no private car. We hire one by the month from a garage. An' if I ever liked a girl and wanted to see her happy, that's the one!"
Rosalie rose. "Must do some shoppin'. Can't say I hope for better news next week, not the kind of good news you're looking for. But I'm hopin' for good news in the end."
Dr. Blake remained sitting, his head dropped in depression on his breast. Rosalie stooped to pat it with a motherly gesture.
"Just remember this," she said, "you love her and she loves you or I miss my guess, an' there ain't no beatin' that combination. If I was fakin' with you I wouldn't need no more than that to make me see your two names in a ring. And remember this, too, boy! There never was anything that turned out just the way you expected. You figure on it twenty ways. It always beats you; and yet when you look back, you say, 'Of course; what a fool I was.' Good-by, boy—here next Tuesday at three unless I tell you different by letter." Rosalie was gone.
Dr. Blake walked in the park that night until dawn broke over the city roofs. And he drew out a dull and anxious existence,—shot and broken with whims, fancies, all the irregularities of a lover,—during the week in which he awaited Rosalie's next report.
VIII
THE FISH NIBBLES
Quietly, naturally, giving a preliminary word of direction to the maid as she lifted the portières, Mrs. Markham entered the drawing room. Pricking with a sense of impatience, tinctured by nervousness over his own folly, Robert H. Norcross awaited her there. She stood a moment regarding him; in that moment, the quick perception, veiled away by an expression of thought, to which the railroad baron owed so much, took her all in. Superficially, he saw a tall woman, approaching fifty, but still vigorous and free from over-burdening flesh.