The party came on into the inn; the sound of their voices and laughter died away.  Some young people at a table near, who also had been looking out of a window, made various comments to which Julius listened with interest.

“Swell-looking lot.  Wonder who they are.”

“Must be the bridal party they have here to-night.  Dining privately.”

“Awfully pretty girls,” was one young woman’s opinion; “better looking than the men.  Why are the men in bridal parties never as good looking as you expect?”

“Bridegroom doesn’t want himself cut out.  He has no advantage of a veil and train; he has to stand out in his raw black and white and compete with the other men on his own merits.”

“I wonder if that was the bride, that prettiest girl in front.”

“Don’t know.  Probably.  If she is, the chap’s lucky who gets her.”

Julius felt a desire to get up and explain that his sister was nobody’s bride, and wasn’t going to be anybody’s until the right man came along.  Instead he sat still and stared at his plate.  As he had watched his sister coming toward him, with Ridgeway Jordan beside her looking into her face with that look of eager hopefulness, he had experienced a powerful longing to go out and lead Ridge away to some secluded spot and explain to him that he wasn’t good enough.  It wasn’t as if there were anything against young Jordan; there was certainly nothing specific.  Julius found himself wishing there were.

Upon the bluff in the cool darkness the two young men spent the following hour, enjoying to the full the refreshing, woods-laden breath of the night air, their pipes sending up clouds of fragrant smoke and keeping them free from the onslaughts of the insects which otherwise at that hour would have been very annoying.  From time to time Julius lighted matches and consulted the unrelenting face of his watch.  They did not talk much; it was a time for silence and the comradeship of silence.

The station at which the tram would stop was not a dozen rods from the hotel.  Until the last minute, therefore, they could linger.  But at half after nine Julius sprang up.

“Let’s go back to the hotel and wait on the porch,” he proposed.

The two paced back to the porch, which hummed with talk.  The whole small company of the inn’s few permanent guests was gathered there, obviously to see the bridal party when it should appear and take to its motors.  There was not much to amuse hotel guests up here in the mountains; they could not afford to miss so interesting a departure.

From not far in the distance suddenly a whistle pierced the night air.  “I say, that’s too bad!” cried Julius low to his friend.  “I hoped they’d come out before you had to go and you could meet Dot.  Just our luck!”

“We’d better be off,” said Waldron, and he led the way.  It was a flag station, as he had learned, and he could not afford to lose the train.  It would be after midnight before he could get back to the city as it was, and he was to leave the city at nine in the morning for his long absence.