At this juncture there was a step on the floor of the front room. Some one was approaching. It was a messenger boy with a telegram.
Dearing took it and tore it open. The letters on the yellow sheet swam before his eyes, but he read the words:
_Kenneth and I are married; now you will understand everything. We are all going to New York, then to Paris for a while. With love from mamma, Lionel, and myself, good-bye. Dora._
Margaret had read the telegram over her brother's shoulder, and with a woman's tact she signed the boy's book and led him to the outer door. She stood there alone for several minutes, looking out into the street. There was no sound in the office. She waited ten minutes, and then, with a tear of sympathy in her eye, she went back to her brother and put her arms about his bowed form.
As soon as was practicable, Fred led his father away from the clerks back to the old man's office.
“Wynn Dearing refused to speak to me on the car as we came up,” he said. “Father, I am afraid I misunderstood your letter, and have made an awful fool of myself by coming. He will think, and his sister will think--” But Fred could go no further. He sank into a seat near the desk, and the banker slowly lowered himself into his revolving chair.
“You say Wynn--you say her brother wouldn't speak to you,” he faltered. “Now, I wonder if--I--I wonder--You see, I hardly knew what to think when she popped in here like she did that day. What she said was all so jumbled and roundabout that, as I wrote you, it was more the way she _acted_ that made me draw my conclusions than her exact words on _any_ direct line.”
“Well, how did she _act?_” Fred inquired, despondently.
“Why, if you _will_ know--” old Simon was growing red in the face. “I had no idea of telling it even to _you_, but the truth is she up and kissed me--so she did! She gave me a smack right on the cheek!”
“That's what she did, by gum! And Toby come in just in time to make her let go of my neck. So, you see, after I thought it all over, why, I thought that maybe she regarded me as being a kin to her in some shape or other, and meant that as a sort o' hint of what she was willing to do.”
At this moment a voice was heard in the corridor. It was Wynn Dearing's, and he was asking for Fred.