Eight o'clock. She dared wait no longer, so, making sure that her father, having eaten and drunk, was resting luxuriously on his bed, she opened her door. The house seemed very quiet, and she went slowly along the upper hall, and after pausing a moment at the top of the fine staircase with its white spindles and mahogany rail, she began to descend. The steps were heavily padded and her footfall made no sound; therefore, as she afterward realized, a very close watch must have been kept, for the moment she came in sight of the open library door a figure appeared there.
The next moment Jefferson Craig had crossed the hall and was standing at the foot of the staircase, looking up at the descending guest. The guest, naturally enough, paused, four stairs up, looking down. The light, from a quaint lantern hood of wrought iron and crystal hanging above the newel post, shone full upon the dark head and vivid face above the demure gray frock with its nunlike broad collar and cuffs of thin white.
The man below looked for a full minute without speaking, but Georgiana could not have told what expression was upon his face or whether he smiled. She knew that at the end of that long look he stretched one arm toward her, and that obeying the gesture which was all but a command she came on down those four remaining steps. Jefferson Craig led her into the library, where a great fire sparkled and leaped and filled the room, otherwise sombre with books, full of welcoming cheer. He closed the door, then led her to the hearth.
"Where shall we begin?" he said, in that low but very distinct voice she so well remembered. "Where we left off?"
"I'm not," answered Georgiana, looking away from him into the fire, whose light flashed in her eyes less disconcertingly than that which she somehow knew leaped in his, "sure where we left off."
"Aren't you? I am. We left off where we had each seen, for just one instant, into the other's heart. And having seen there was no forgetting--no?--Georgiana?"
"It was good of you to come to me," he said very gently. Her hand was still held fast in his. "I did my best to have it the other way--the usual way. There seemed a fate against it. I could have written, but somehow I didn't want to. I preferred to wait--with the memory of your face always before me, till I could see it again. And now that I see it--bent down--and turned away"--he laughed a low laugh of content--"oh, look up, Georgiana! Surely you're not afraid now. You know I've been loving you ever since I saw you first, in spite of thinking I must not, because of the one I understood you belonged to----"