She placed the letter upon her dressing-table and studied its envelope while she removed her dress, brushed and arranged her hair, and put on the frock she intended to wear for the evening; she was going with Tom Wendell to a small dance at the home of a special friend.  She did not open the letter, but left it, unopened, propped up against a little pink silk pincushion, giving it one last glance as she switched off the light before closing the door.  On the evening of the Clifford-Jordan wedding Ridgeway Jordan, brother of the bride and best man to the bridegroom, had offered himself in marriage to the maid of honour, Dorothy Broughton.  She had done her best to prevent him, but he had reached such a stage of despairing passion that he could no longer be managed and did the deed at a moment when she could not escape.  Being gently but firmly refused, he had declared his life to be irretrievably ruined and immediately after the wedding had flung himself out of town, vowing that she should not be bothered with the sight of the work her hands had wrought.  When another long-time friend, Thomas Wendell, seized the opportunity of Ridge’s absence to further his own claims to Dorothy’s preferment, she, profiting by painful experience, had somehow made it clear to him that only comradeship was in her thoughts.  Even on these tacit terms Wendell was eager to serve as escort whenever she would allow it.

On this September evening he was on hand early and bore her away with ill-concealed satisfaction.  “I say,” he observed suddenly in the pause of a waltz, “did you happen to have a fortune left you to-day?”

“Why, Tommy?” Dorothy’s face grew instantly sober.

“Oh, don’t turn off the illumination.  I’m sorry I spoke.  It was only that you somehow seemed—­well, not exactly unhappy to-night, and I couldn’t get at the cause.  I should like to flatter myself that I’m the cause, but I know better.”

“I must be a gloomy person ordinarily if there seems any change to-night.  Don’t be foolish, Thomas; I’ve had no fortune left me; I never shall have.”

She felt not unlike one with a fortune, however, a fortune of unknown character about to be made known to her, as, shortly after midnight—­Dorothy kept comparatively early hours when she went to dances—­she opened the door of her room again.  Her first glance was for the letter.  There it stood as she had left it.  More than once during the evening she had caught herself fearing that something might happen to it in her absence.  She might find the letter gone—­forever gone—­and unread!  She smiled at it as she saw it standing there, but still she did not open it.  She took off her dancing frock, braided her hair for the night in two heavy plaits, and slipped into a little loose gown of cambric, lace, and ribbon before at last she approached the waiting letter.

Why she did all this, putting off the reading of it until the latest possible moment, only a girl like Dorothy Broughton could have told.  And even when she broke the seal it was with apparently reluctant fingers.  It was so delightful not to know, yet to be upon the verge of knowing!  But as soon as the first words met her eyes there was no longer any delay.  She read rapidly, her glance drinking in the letter at a draught.