The Wayfarers — Part 111

He did not answer for a moment, looking at her with hard eyes, void of expression save for a certain tenseness. It was a look she knew. Then he answered roughly:

“I’m going in on the twelve-o’clock train with some of the boys. It’s no good to talk.”

“Lawson! not now.” Her tone was angry. “Go up-stairs—to bed.”

“Well, I guess—not!” said Lawson. He swept her hand from his arm, and was out of the door and running quickly down the steps before she turned.

Dosia, on her knees, heard his step; it set her heart beating with a rush of emotions that drowned her prayer. She was his, though she had been warned.

Warned—yes; and left carelessly to her fate in a world of chaperons and parents and guardians and people who knew!

It was the night of Mrs. Leverich’s grand ball. Dosia was “coming out.”

The preparations had been going on for the entire week since the drive. The great house had been cleaned from top to bottom, the floors waxed, the state silver brought out and polished. Mrs. Leverich drove out half a dozen times a day with Dosia, to order or to countermand orders, to select, compare, discuss. Every arrangement that was made or thought of required discussion—what furniture was to be taken up in the attic and what left where it belonged; where the flowers were to be placed, where the musicians were to take their stand; how many small tables would be needed for the serving of the supper that was to come from town. Leverich himself had said there was to be no expense spared, and he would see to the wine; all he wanted was the privilege of asking some of his own friends. The invitations were out late, as there had been a delay in the engraving; Dosia looked at her own name on them, and tried to realize that this was indeed what Mr. Leverich called “her party.” He had insisted, at his wife’s suggestion, in presenting Dosia with her gown for the occasion, and had been pleased with her pretty thanks for his kindness. There was something about Mr. Leverich, with all his outer coarseness, that Dosia liked. When she spoke in a certain way, he never answered wrong, as his wife sometimes did; he understood.

Not since the night of the barge-ride had Dosia seen her lover. After her first disquiet and wonder at not seeing him at the breakfast to which she came down very late the next morning, she was relieved to hear that he had suddenly been called away earlier. He might not be back for a day or two. She longed to question more, but could not bring herself to do it, and his absence seemed to be taken as a matter of course by everyone else. But there had been a note from him, after the two days were up, postmarked from the city—a mere line that said only, “For the girl I love.”