“When she reaches the house, whoever she may be, I would ask her in. It may be some one who has come up by the trolley on the lower road expecting to be met; better go and open the front door,” said Mrs. Lawton, hastening to light the lamps, which were her special care.
Brooke started to act upon the suggestion, but as she gave a final look she saw that the woman had already turned into the barn lane, and, though evidently almost spent, was coming across to the kitchen door with a directness that betokened familiarity. So Brooke returned to the side door and, opening it a crack, held it against the racking wind. As the gust swept through the house, Tatters, who had been lying in the hallway, arose, gave a growl, then a sniff, and, with his tail beginning to swing in a circle, nosed open the door, in spite of his mistress’s effort to stop him, and threw himself violently against the dripping figure coming up the cobbled path, who seemed to grapple with him.
“Back, Tatters! come back!” called Brooke, letting go her hold of the door, which swung back with a clatter, as she clapped her hands to attract the dog’s attention.
“Down, bad dog! Why, he will tear the woman to pieces. Quick! blow the horn for Adam; I never dreamed he could act so!” cried Mrs. Lawton.
Brooke raised her hand to take the ram’s horn from its hook, still calling and whistling to the dog, whose actions seemed to be wholly unaccountable. As she looked, her hand dropped; the woman was hugging Tatters, not buffeting him, while at the same instant the wind gave her hat a final twist, breaking it from its moorings and carrying with it the short veil whose modish black dots clung soddenly, like concentrated tears, and the woman’s face was revealed.
“It is Cousin Keith!” gasped Brooke, dashing into the rain to lend a helping hand, for the water-soaked skirts had finally wound themselves into a bandage around the poor woman’s legs and effectually prevented her from lifting her feet to the steps, upon which she sank, chancing into the biggest puddle she possibly could have chosen.
Mrs. Lawton came to the door with hands extended, and a totally bewildered expression on her face, while the same ideas were crowding the brain of both mother and daughter. Had Keith West gone out of her mind, or had a letter telling of her coming miscarried, and was her plight wholly the result of not having been met and having miscalculated the strength of the storm? Probably by this time she was no longer Keith West, but Mrs. James White. If so, where was the First Cause? Had there been a railway accident, or had she been “abandoned at the altar,” as the newspapers put such matters?