So that was what the knock had meant! Dawn was glad she had not answered it.

"Oh, please, please," she said, clasping her hands in the att.i.tude of pleading, "couldn't you just explain to him that I'm a very silly girl, but I should like just these last few minutes to myself. Tell him that if he has any message, please to tell it to you, and to let me be by myself now. Tell him he doesn't know how a girl feels when she is going to stop being a girl. Tell him, please, that if he has any sympathy for me at all, he won't ask to see me now. It is only a little while, and I want it to myself."

Her great pleading eyes met Mrs. Van Rensselaer's cold gaze, and her whole slender figure took an att.i.tude of intense wistfulness. The elder woman, cold and unloving as she was, could not but acknowledge that the girl was very beautiful. Her heart might have been touched more had it not been for the gnawing thought that this child's mother had been the canker-worm which had blighted the step-mother's whole life.

She turned grimly from the girl, well content that her plans were coming out as she desired, yet not entirely comfortable in mind or conscience.

Almost she determined to risk telling the girl everything, yet dared not, lest she utterly refuse to be married even at this late hour.

"Well, I suppose you must have your own way. You always have," she said grimly.

Dawn wondered when.

"I'll do my best to explain your state of mind," continued Mrs. Van Rensselaer, "though I'm sure I don't know how he'll take it. It's my opinion he isn't going to have a bed of roses through life, being a husband to you, any way, and I suppose he may as well begin to learn."

With which unsympathetic remark, she went heavily out of the girl's room, and into her own, where she speedily got herself into her wedding garments. A red spot burned in either sallow cheek, but her mouth wore the line of victory. So far she had carried out her schemes well.

CHAPTER X

At breakfast time, as the other guests were coming downstairs, Mrs. Van Rensselaer beckoned Charles inside the dining-room door, and gave him his message in a low tone.

"It will be all right, Mr. Winthrop. Your offer will be accepted gratefully, but she asks you to be kind enough to leave her to herself until the time for the ceremony. She is so much shaken by this whole thing that she is afraid to talk about it, lest it will unnerve her.

She says she does not need to talk it over, that you are very kind, and if you have any message, you can send it by me after breakfast."

"Thank you, thank you!" said Charles, his face bright with the joy of knowing that his strange suit had been successful. He was disappointed, of course, not to see the girl at once, but it would not be long before she was his wife, and he could talk with her as much as he pleased.

After all, there was something wonderful in her trusting him enough to marry him, when she had seen him but twice. Had she, perhaps, had the same feeling about him that he had about her? Had that been the explanation of the light in her eyes?

These thoughts played a happy trill in his heart as he greeted his father and mother and seated himself at the table. All through the meal, he was planning the message he would send to his beloved.

When her step-mother had left the room, Dawn had fastened the door securely against all intrusion. She was determined to have to herself what little time was left.

On the couch, under her window was spread the beautiful frock which her step-mother had prepared for her to wear. It was of white satin, rich and elaborate, and encrusted with much beautiful lace, which had been in her father's family for years, and was yellow with age. It was traditional that all the brides of the house had worn these rare laces.

Dawn hated the frock and the lace. She would much rather have worn a simple muslin of her own mother, but as the marriage was not to her taste, why should her dress be, either? What mattered it? Let them all have their way with her.

Mrs. Van Rensselaer had taken much pride in preparing the beautiful garments, but Dawn knew why. She knew that it was for others to look upon, so that they would praise the step-mother for having been so good to the child who had been thrust upon her care under circ.u.mstances which, to put it mildly, were unpleasant. It spoke of no loving kindness toward her.

And so Dawn did not go over to the couch, as many another girl might have done, to examine again the filmy hand-embroidered garments, the silk stockings, and the dainty satin slippers, sewed over with seed-pearls that were also an heirloom in the family. They meant to her nothing but signs of her coming bondage.

Instead, she went to the little three-legged mahogany stand, where she had placed in a tall pitcher her spray of rosebuds. She bent over to take in their delicate fragrance, and the eyes of him who had given them to her seemed to be looking into her soul again, as twice they had looked before.

It was a strange thing-and she thought of it afterward many times-that she did not yet know who he was, and had never stopped to question. It had not even occurred to her to wonder if he were a relative or only a friend, or how he came to be in her home. She accepted him as she would have accepted a respite in some quiet place for her fevered spirit, or the visit of an angel with a message of strength from heaven. She had a vague feeling that if he had come before things might have been different.

She knelt beside the stand and let her hot cheek rest against a cool bud; she touched her lips to another, and then laid the roses on her eyelids. It seemed almost like a pitying human hand upon her spirit, and comforted her tired heart. She felt that she was growing old, very, very old, in these last few hours, to meet the requirements of her wedding day, and the touch of the buds seemed to steady and help her, as her mother's hand and lips might have done.

By and by she would have to get up and put on those fine garments lying over there in the morning sunlight, and go downstairs, for them all to stare at her misery; but now she would forget it all for a little while, and just think of her new-found friend, who had looked at her with such a wonderful smile-a smile in which there seemed no place for fault-finding or sternness or grim solemnity-the things which had seemed to make up the main part of her girlhood life.

Meantime, Mr. Winthrop and his host had gone to meet the train, upon which the expectant bridegroom would arrive.

As they neared the tavern that served as a station for the new railroad, they saw an old man, a woman, and two little children sitting upon a settle on the front stoop. The man arose and came a step or two toward them, and Mr. Winthrop saw that it was William McCord.

He seemed embarra.s.sed and he spoke apologetically:

"Mr. Winthrop, sir, I don't jest know what you'll think about me bein'

here-I don't, and I'm sorry's I can be about it; but, you see, I knowed Harrington pretty well. I knowed he might find a way to smooth it all over and pull the wool over your eyes, and I'd pa.s.sed my word I'd come here with her and stop the marriage, if so be it turned out you couldn't or wouldn't feel called upon to do so. I didn't count on your comin'

down to the train. You see, we ben watchin' every train sence yesterday, to make sure he didn't get away to the house without our seein' him.

That poor girl there ain't et scarce a mouthful sence she started from home-only just a drop o' coffee now an' then-and she ain't slep'

neither. She's jest keepin' alive to hunt him up and try to persuade him to come home to her an' the children. You see, I had to let her come. I couldn't say no. She was up here day 'fore yesterday, when I come to see you. She didn't want I should tell you, because she ain't got the clo'es and fixin's she'd like to hev you see her in, but she was determined to come--"

He paused and looked back toward the bench where the woman and the children sat.

Mr. Winthrop's face had taken on a look of distress as he recognized William McCord. He turned to his companion and explained in a low tone, "This is the man who brought me the evidence."

Mr. Van Rensselaer regarded the man with keen eyes, and decided at once that any word from a man with such a face was as good as an affidavit.

When William looked toward the woman her worn face flamed crimson, then turned deadly white again. She must have been unusually pretty not so very many years ago, but sorrow, toil and poverty had left their ineradicable marks upon her face and stripped her of all claim to beauty now. Her dress was plain, and as neat as could be expected under the circ.u.mstances. Her roughened hair showed an attempt to put it into order, and her eyes looked as though she had not slept for many nights.

In spite of her shrinking, there was a dignity about her. The bony hand that held the youngest child wore a wedding ring, now much too large for the finger.

The oldest child, a girl apparently of five, had yellow hair and rather bold blue eyes that reminded Mr. Winthrop startlingly of his eldest son's when he was a small boy. The youngest, a sallow, sickly boy, looked like his mother.

The kindly face of Mr. Winthrop was overspread with trouble, but he grasped the humbler man's hand warmly:

"That's all right, William," he said heartily. "I suppose she felt she must come, and there's no harm done. Only, for our friend Mr. Van Rensselaer's sake, keep the matter as quiet as possible."

"Certainly, certainly, Mr. Winthrop, and thank you, sir," said the old man gratefully.

Then he looked questioningly toward the woman, and took a step in her direction.

"Alberty, this here is his father," said William McCord and withdrew hastily.

Mr. Van Rensselaer at once engaged him in earnest conversation, giving the other man opportunity to talk with his unknown daughter-in-law without being observed.

The woman looked up abashed into the kindly eyes bent upon her. Yet she felt the right was on her side, and she had no need to quail before any one.

"It has given me great sorrow, madam, to learn of my son's behavior," he began. "It is particularly distressing to us because he is our first born, and deeply loved by us." He paused, overcome by his emotion, and the dry-eyed woman, who looked as if she had long ago shed all the tears she had to shed, glanced up wonderingly and said in a voice that betrayed her lack of culture:

"Yes, that's one trouble with him: folks always like him too well. He thinks he can do anything he wants, and it won't make no diff'runce.

But he can't go no further with me. I've jest made up my mind to take a stand, even ef I have to go to that rich girl and show her them childern."

The father in him almost shuddered at the vernacular. Of what could Harrington have been thinking when he married this woman-Harrington, who had been brought up amid the refinements of life, and been almost too sensitive to unpleasant things? It was the old story of a pretty face, and a boy far from home and acquaintances, with no one to advise, and no danger of being found out.

"I used to like him a lot myself," went on the tired voice, "an' I might even yet ef he'd behave himself and stay home, an' pervide good fer us like he used to." There was a pleasant drawl to her tone, like a weary child's. The father's heart was touched.

"Has my son sent you money during his absences?" The question had to be asked, but it cut the old gentleman to the heart to speak the words.

She turned dull eyes on him.