"Can I do anything for you?" he said, advancing toward the stranger, who caught up the child in her arms, and without a word of answer, hurried away in the storm and rapidly increasing darkness.
"Curis! She must have got off t'other side of the car. I wonder who she is and where she is goin'. Not fur, I hope, such a night as this. Ugh! the wind is like so many screech owls and almost takes a feller off his feet," the agent said to himself, as he went back to the light and warmth of his office, where he soon forgot the woman, who, with the child held closely in her arms, walked swiftly on, her eyes strained to their utmost tension as they peered through the darkness until she reached a gate opening into a grassy road which led through the fields in a straight line to Tracy Park and Collingwood beyond.
Carriages seldom traversed this road, but in the summer the people from Collingwood and Tracy Park frequently walked that way, as it was a much nearer route to town. Here the woman stopped, and looking up at the tall arch over the gate, said aloud, as if repeating a lesson learned by heart.
"Leave the car on your right hand; take the road to the right, as I have drawn it on paper; go straight on for a quarter of a mile or more until you come to a wide iron gate with a tall arch over it. This gate is also at your right. You cannot mistake it."
"No," she continued, "I cannot mistake it. This is the place. We are almost there," and putting down the child, she tugged with all her strength at the gate, which she at last succeeded in opening, and resuming her burden, passed through into the field where the snow lay on the ground in great white drifts, while the blinding flakes and cutting sleet from the leaden clouds above beat pitilessly upon her as she struggled on her wearisome way.
And while she toiled on, fighting bravely with the storm, and occasionally speaking a word of encouragement to the little child nestled in her bosom, Arthur Tracy stood at one of the windows in his library, with his face pressed against the pane, as he looked anxiously out into darkness, shuddering involuntarily as the wind came screaming round a corner of the house, bending the tall evergreens until their slender tops almost touched the ground, and then rushing on down the carriage-drive with a shriek like so many demons let loose from the ice-caves of the north, where the winds are supposed to hold high carnival.
They were surely holding a carnival to-night, and as Arthur listened to the roar of the tempest he whispered to himself:
"A wild, wild night for Gretchen to arrive, and her dear little feet and hands will be so cold; but there is warmth and comfort here, and love such as she never dreamed of, poor Gretchen! I will hold her in my arms and chafe her cold fingers and kiss her tired face until she feels that her home-coming is a happy one. It must be almost time," and he glanced at a small clock which stood upon the mantle.
In the adjoining room the dinner table was laid for two, and one could see that more care than usual had been given to its arrangement, while the roses in the center were the largest and finest of their kind. In the grate a bright fire was burning, and Arthur placed a large easy-chair before it and then brought from the library a footstool, with a delicate covering of blue and gold. No foot had ever yet profaned this stool with a touch, for it was one of Arthur's specialties, bought at a great price in Algiers; but he brought it now for Gretchen and saw in fancy resting upon it the cold little feet his hands were to rub and warm and caress until life came back to them, while Gretchen's blue eyes smiled upon him and Gretchen's sweet voice said:
"Thank you, Arthur. It is pleasant coming home."
For the last two or three weeks Arthur had been very quiet and taciturn, but on the morning of this day he had seemed restless and nervous, and his nervousness and excitability increased until a violent headache came on, and Charles, the servant who attended him, reported to Mrs. Tracy that his lunch had been untouched, and that he really seemed quite ill. Then Frank went to him, and sitting down beside him as he lay upon a couch in the room with Gretchen's picture, said to him, not unkindly:
"Are you sick to-day?"
For a few moments Arthur made no reply, but lay with his eyes closed as if he had not heard. Then suddenly rousing himself, he burst out, vehemently:
"Frank, you think me crazy, and you have based that belief in part, on the fact that I am always expecting Gretchen. And so for a long time I have suppressed all mention of her, though I have never ceased to look for her arrival, since—since—well, I may as well tell you the truth. I know now that she could not have been with me on the ship and in the train, although I thought she was. I wrote her to join me in Liverpool, and fancied she did. But my brain must have been a little mixed. She did not come with me, and when I made up my mind to that, as I did a few weeks ago, I wrote again telling her to come at once, and giving her directions how to find the park if she should arrive at the station and no one there to meet her. She has had more than time to get here, but I have said nothing about sending the carriage for her, as that seems to annoy you. But Frank—" and Arthur's voice trembled as he went on—"I dreamed of her last night; such strange dreams, and to-day she seems so near to me that more than once I have put out my hand to touch her. Frank, it is not insanity—this presentiment that she is near me—that she is coming to me, or tidings of her; it is mind acting upon mind; her thoughts of me reaching forward and fastening upon my thoughts of her, making a mental bridge on which I see her coming to me. And you will send for her. You will let John go again. Think if she should arrive in this terrible storm and no one there to meet her. You will send this once, and if she is not there I will not trouble you again."
There was something in Arthur's face which Frank could not resist, and he promised that John should go.
"Oh, Frank," Arthur exclaimed, his face brightening at once, "you have made me so happy! My headache is quite gone;" and then he began to plan the dinner, which was to be more elaborate than usual, and served an hour later, so as to give plenty of time for Gretchen to rest and dress herself if she wished to do so.
"And she will when she sees the lovely dress I have for her," he thought, and after his brother left him he went to the large closet where he kept the trunk which he called Gretchen's, and into which Dolly's curious eyes had never looked, although she longed to know its contents.
This Arthur now opened, and had Dolly been there she would have held her breath in wonder at the many beautiful things which it contained. Folded in one of the trays, as only a French packer accustomed to the business could have arranged it, was an exquisite dinner-dress of salmon-colored satin, with a brocaded front and jacket of blue and gold, and here and there a knot of duchess lace, which gave it a more airy effect. This Arthur took out carefully and laid upon the bed in his sleeping-apartment, together with every article of the toilet necessary to such a dress, from a lace pocket-handkerchief to a pair of pale-blue silk hose, which he kissed reverently as he whispered:
"Dear little feet, which are so cold now in the wretched car; but they will never be cold again when once I have them here."
He was talking in German, as he always did when Gretchen was the subject of his thoughts, and so Dolly, who came to say that some things which he had ordered for dinner were impossible now, could not understand him, but she caught a glimpse of the dress upon the bed, and advanced quickly toward the open door, exclaiming:
"Oh, Arthur, what a lovely gown! Whose——"
But before she completed her question Arthur was upon the threshold and had closed the door, saying as he did so:
"It is Gretchen's. I had it made at Worth's. She is coming to-night, you know."
Dolly had heard from her husband of Arthur's fancy, and though she had no faith in it, she replied:
"Yes, Frank told me you were expecting her, and I came to say that we cannot get the fish you ordered, for no one can go to town in this storm, and I doubt if we could find it if we did. You will have to skip the fish."
"All