Hastily folding it, she stuck it into her bodice, and made her way into the room where she became lost among the guests. There would be time enough when the formalities of the departure were over, when Peggy was less occupied, to hand it her. She would wait at any rate until later in the evening.
But she did not return the paper. For with the commotion of the guests in the several orders of their going, a serious business of felicitation and devoir was demanded alongside of which all other matters only served as distractions. Consequently, the note once placed within her bodice, all thought of it vanished for the remainder of the evening.
Only when she had returned home that night, fatigued and almost disgusted with the perfunctory performances of the evening, did she discover it, and then not until she was about to remove the garment within whose folds it lay concealed. It fell to the ground; she stooped to pick it up.
"Oh, dear! I quite forgot it. I must attend to it the first thing in the morning."
And she placed it on the dresser where it could not escape her eye. Then she retired.
But she did not sleep. There she lay wide awake tossing nervously to and fro. She tried to close her eyes only to find them wandering about the room in the obscure dimness, focusing themselves now on the old mahogany dresser, now on the little prie-Dieu against the inner wall with the small ivory crucifix outlined faintly above it, now on the chintz hangings that covered the window. She could hear her heart, pounding its great weight of bitterness against the pillow; and as she listened she thought of Stephen's arrest and of its thousand and one horrible consequences. She tried to congratulate herself on her sweet serenity and the serenity only mocked her and anticipation loomed as fiercely as before.
The next she knew was a quiet awakening, as if her mother's hand had been put gently on her arm. Outside ten thousand light leaves shivered gently and the birds were calling to one another in melodious tones. This was her first glimpse of the day and it sent her suddenly to her knees.
Stephen came late that afternoon. He had not been expected; yet she was happy because he came. She had done little that day; had not left the house, nor dressed for the occasion. The note was where she had left it, and all reference to it buried with her thoughts of the evening.
