“Where is she bound for? Who lives up this way?”
“I don’t know,” answered Byrd, lowering his voice in the fear of startling her into a knowledge of their presence. “It may be she is going to Miss Tremaine’s; the High School is somewhere in this direction.”
But even as they spoke, the gliding figure before them turned into another street, and before they knew it, they were on the car-track leading out to Somerset Park.
“Ha! I know now,” whispered Hickory. “It is Orcutt she is after.” And pressing the arm of Byrd in his enthusiasm, he speeded after her with renewed zeal.
Byrd, seeing no reason to dispute a fact that was every moment becoming more evident, hurried forward also, and after a long and breathless walk—for she seemed to be urged onward by flying feet—they found themselves within sight of the grand old trees that guarded the entrance to the lawyer’s somewhat spacious grounds.
“What are we going to do now?” asked Byrd, stopping, as they heard the gate click behind her.
“Wait and watch,” said Hickory. “She has not led us this wild-goose chase for nothing.” And leaping the hedge, he began creeping up toward the house, leaving his companion to follow or not, as he saw fit.
Meantime Imogene had passed up the walk and paused before the front door. But a single look at it seemed to satisfy her, for, moving hurriedly away, she flitted around the corner of the house and stopped just before the long windows whose brightly illumined sashes proclaimed that the master of the house was still in his library.
She seemed to feel relieved at this sight. Pausing, she leaned against the frame of a trellis-work near by to gather up her courage or regain her breath before proceeding to make her presence known to the lawyer. As she thus leaned, the peal of the church clock was heard, striking the hour of nine. She started, possibly at finding it so late, and bending forward, looked at the windows before her with an anxious eye that soon caught sight of a small opening left by the curtains having been drawn together by a too hasty or a too careless hand, and recognizing the opportunity it afforded for a glimpse into the room before her, stepped with a light tread upon the piazza and quietly peered within.
The sight she saw never left her memory.
Seated before a deadened fire, she beheld Mr. Orcutt. He was neither writing nor reading, nor, in the true sense of the word, thinking. The papers he had evidently taken from his desk, lay at his side undisturbed, and from one end of the room to the other, solitude, suffering, and despair seemed to fill the atmosphere and weigh upon its dreary occupant, till the single lamp which shone beside him burned dimmer and dimmer, like a life going out or a purpose vanishing in the gloom of a stealthily approaching destiny.
Imogene, who had come to this place thus secretly and at this late hour of the day with the sole intent of procuring the advice of this man concerning the deception which had been practised upon her before the trial, felt her heart die within her as she surveyed this rigid figure and realized all it implied. Though his position was such she could not see his face, there was that in his attitude which bespoke hopelessness and an utter weariness of life, and as ash after ash fell from the grate, she imagined how the gloom deepened on the brow which till this hour had confronted the world with such undeviating courage and confidence.
It was therefore a powerful shock to her when, in another moment, he looked up, and, without moving his body, turned his head slowly around in such a way as to afford her a glimpse of his face. For, in all her memory of it—and she had seen it distorted by many and various emotions during the last few weeks—she had never beheld it wear such a look as now. It gave her a new idea of the man; it filled her with dismay, and sent the lifeblood from her cheeks. It fascinated her, as the glimpse of any evil thing fascinates, and held her spellbound long after he had turned back again to his silent contemplation of the fire and its ever-drifting ashes. It was as if a vail had been rent before her eyes, disclosing to her a living soul writhing in secret struggle with its own worst passions; and horrified at the revelation, more than horrified at the remembrance that it was her own action of the morning which had occasioned this change in one she had long reverenced, if not loved, she sank helplessly upon her knees and pressed her face to the window in a prayer for courage to sustain this new woe and latest, if not heaviest, disappointment.
It came while she was kneeling—came in the breath of the cold night wind, perhaps; for, rising up, she turned her forehead gratefully to the breeze, and drew in long draughts of it before she lifted her hand and knocked upon the window.
The sharp, shrill sound made by her fingers on the pane reassured her as much as it startled him. Gathering up her long cloak, which had fallen apart in her last hurried movement, she waited with growing self-possession for his appearance at the window.
He came almost immediately—came with his usual hasty step and with much of his usual expression on his well-disciplined features. Flinging aside the curtains, he cried impatiently: “Who is there?” But at sight of the tall figure of Imogene standing upright and firm on the piazza without,
