An opening crash of the cymbals covered her confusion. The four girls were staring at her, round-eyed. They had not believed Miss Gray capable of such agitation! What _ever_ had happened----
"An old friend," she whispered, her face alternately paling and flushing. "A very dear--old--friend! The--the third--violin----" She leaned weakly against the box-rail. The girls looked down at the orchestra. There--under the leader's arm--sat the third violinist--and a white streak ran from his forehead straight back through his coal black hair!
As though an electric shock flashed through them the four girls straightened and stiffened. A glance, charged with meaning, passed from one to another. Gyp, remembering the moment of confidence between her and Miss Gray, slipped her hand into Miss Gray's and squeezed it encouragingly.
Not one of them heard a note of the wonderful music; each was steadying herself for that moment when the program should end. Their box was very near the little door that led behind the stage. Gyp almost pushed Miss Gray toward it.
"Of _course_ you're going to see him! _Hurry._ You look so nice----" Gyp was so excited that she did not know quite what she was saying. "Oh--_hurry!_ You may never see him again."
Then they, precipitously and on tiptoe, followed little Miss Gray. Though it did not happen as each in her romantic soul had planned, it was none the less satisfying! In a chilly, bare anteroom off the stage, at a queer sound behind him resembling in a small way his name, the third violinist turned from the job of putting his violin into its box.
"_Milly_," he cried, his face flaming red with a pleased surprise.
"George----" Miss Gray held back, twisting her fingers in a helpless flutter. "I--I thought--when you sent--the--flowers--and the verses--that maybe, you--you still cared!"
Just for a moment a puzzled look clouded the man's face--then a vision in the doorway of four wildly-warning hands made him exclaim quickly:
"Care--didn't I tell you, Milly, that I'd never care for anyone else?"
"He took her right in his arms," four tongues explained at once, when, the next day, the self-appointed committee on romance reported back to the other Ravens. "Of course, he didn't know we were peeking. He isn't exactly the type _I'd_ go crazy over, but he's so much better than that undertaker! And going home Miss Gray told us all about it. It would make the grandest movie! She had to support her mother and he didn't earn enough to take care of them both, and she wouldn't let him wait all that time; she told him to find someone else. But you see he didn't. Isn't love funny? And then when her mother finally died she was too proud to send him word, and I guess she didn't know where he was, anyway, or maybe she thought he _had_ gone and done what she told him to do and married some one else. And she believed all the time that he sent her those flowers--I s'pose by that say-it-with-flowers-by-telegraph-from-any-part-of-the-country method. Oh, I _hope_ she'll wear a veil and let us be bridesmaids!"