He came slowly to her, sat down beside her and, while simply taking her hand in greeting, let his trained touch fall upon her pulse. It told him the dread secret, but it did not shatter his calm--he even smiled into the pale face and said lightly:

"Well, what have you been trying to do?"

Doris told him, without emotion, what had occurred. She did not remove her hand from his--his touch comforted her; held her to the things she knew and loved and trusted.

"And now, David," she said at last, "I think we have both known that some day this would occur. We are too good friends to be anything but frank--I am not afraid, and it is essential that I should know the truth. The family ogre has caught me--but it has not conquered me yet!"

"Well, Doris--it is the first call!" The man's words hurt like a knife turned upon himself.

"I feared so--and I am forty-nine."

"A mere child, my dear, if we deal honestly with the fact. Your father was fifty-five and might have lived to be seventy if he had stopped in time. Your grandfather----"

"Never mind, David, let's keep to me. How much longer--have I?"

"No man on earth could tell you that, my dear, but I hope--always granting that you will be wise--that you may count on, say, twenty years."

They both smiled. After all, what did it matter?

"And--what do you suggest I should do--as a beginning of the--twenty years?"

"Close this house, Doris, and start another kind of existence--somewhere else."

"Why, David--I must bring the girls out, you know. They must not be told--of this."

"They need be told only what you choose to have them know, but as to the bringing-out farce--that's rot! Those girls will get out by one door or another, never fear. _You_ are to be kept in--that's the important thing at present."

"Dear old David!" Doris's eyes dimmed as she looked at the kind face bending over the hands lying limp, now, on her lap. She noticed that there was white on the temple where the dark hair had turned; the heavy shoulders were bent permanently. She longed to do something more for David during the next--twenty years!

"You must not give way, Doris. A change is good for us all." Martin noted the tears in the eyes holding his own, but he did not understand their source.

"I am afraid the girls will be so disappointed," was what Doris said.

"Pampered creatures! It will do them good. But Nancy will love it and Joan can kick the traces if she wants to--that will do her good."

Martin leaned back and crossed his legs in the old boyish way.

"What will Nancy love, David?"

"Why, the out-of-door country life. She's that kind. Flowers and animals and quiet."

"Country life?" Doris sat up. "But, David, I could not stand country life, myself. I love to look at the country, listen to it, play with it--but I am a citizen to the core. It is simply impossible. One has to be born with the country in his blood to be part of it."

It was like pleading with the stern expression on Martin's face.

He was not apparently listening, and when he spoke he carried on his own thought:

"Queer how things dovetail. We drop a st.i.tch and then go back and pick it up--now there is that place of yours, down South, Ridge House!"

Doris's face twitched and then, because she was in that state closely bordering upon the unknown, that state open to impressions and suggestions from sources outside the explainable, Silver Gap seemed to open alluringly to her imagination. It _was_ like a dropped st.i.tch to be taken up and woven into the pattern!

She suddenly felt that she had always known she must go back. It was like the heart trouble--a thing on her road! Doris smiled and David patted her hands.

"That's the way it strikes me," he said, quite as if he were gaining his inspiration whence hers came. "After you told me about the--the children, you know, Doris, years ago, I went down there and gave the place a look-over. The South always affects me like a--well, a lotus flower--sleeping but filled with wonderful dreams. It gets me! Why, after seeing Ridge House I even went so far as to buy a piece of land known as Blowing Rock Clearing. I've planned, if that scamp of a nephew of mine ever develops into a sawbones, to leave him in charge here and go down South myself and put up a shack on my clearing." Martin was watching Doris now from under his brows; he was talking against the silence that might engulf her again; seeking to hold her to a future that he had been vaguely considering in the past. He thankfully saw her interest growing.

"You did that, David--how like you!"

The tears still came easily to Doris's eyes.

"Oh, well, I have a thrifty streak, and I hated to see a property like Ridge House lie fallow. It's great. The buying of Blowing Rock was pure Yankee sense of a bargain. But you see how it all works out. You'll have the time of your life developing your holdings and, at odd moments, I can start my shack. Look upon the change as an adventure--nothing permanent. In a year or so you may be able to spend most of the time on pavements--though why in G.o.d's name you want to is hard to imagine."

Doris was smiling.

"But the girls!" she faltered.

"Forget them. Give them a chance to think of you. Take them abroad--that will be good for you all, but in the autumn, Doris, go South! You must escape next winter."

CHAPTER VIII

"_One is a.s.sured that there is a Power that fights with us against the confusion and evil of the world._"

The warm June sunlight lay over the broad lawns and meadows of Dondale; it touched with luring power the buds to blossom and, by its tricks of magic, girlhood to womanhood.

Only a month ago Joan and Nancy Thornton and those who, with them, were about to leave Miss Phillips's school, had seemed little girls, but now they were changed. There was a gravity when they looked back at the safe, happy years that not even the glory of the future could dispel.

They were eager to go forward but were half afraid.

Joan and Nancy had left the others and walked across the lawn and were sitting on a vine-covered wall under a n.o.ble magnolia tree. Nancy was still sweetly fair and she had not outgrown the childish outline of cheek and chin, the pretty droop of the left eyelid, and the quick habit of smiling. She was tall and slim and graceful and bore herself with a touching dignity that was as unconscious as it was distinguished.

Nature had not arrived yet with Joan. She was still in the making, and the best that could be said for her was that she was undergoing the ordeal with bewitching charm.

The dusky hair was filled with life and light; the eyes were yellow-brown and dark-lashed; the skin was creamy and smooth and the features irregular--eyes and mouth a bit prominent in the thin face.

Joan was thin, not slim. You were conscious of her bones--but they were pretty bones, and every muscle of her lithe young body was as flexible and strong as a boy's. She could change from awkwardness to grace by a turn of thought. Joan was subject to outside control, while Nancy seemed possessed by innate inheritance. Both girls were in white, and while Nancy's appearance was immaculate, Joan's was suggestive of indifference.

"It is wonderful--this going abroad," Joan was saying while her long, supple fingers wove the stems of daisies into an intricate pattern. "And to go to that little Italian town where mother was married! Nan, I'm going to know all about mother and father this summer."

Nancy's head was lifted slightly, and her cool blue eyes fixed themselves upon Joan. There was no doubt about the colour of Nancy's eyes--they were blue.

"I do hope, Joan," she said, "that you are not going to spoil everything by making Aunt Dorrie uncomfortable. If she has not told us things, it is because she thinks best not to."

"But it's getting on my nerves, Nan. It's ominous. Maybe there is a--a--tragedy in our young lives"--Joan dramatically set her words into comedy--"a dark past. How I would adore that!"

"I would loathe it!" Nancy murmured, "and there couldn't be. I know there is only a deep sadness. I wouldn't hurt Aunt Dorrie by--by unearthing it."

"Nan," here Joan pointed her finger, "do you know a blessed thing about your father? I don't!"