And now she really wanted to run away!  If she could have had a week, a month, between the reading of this letter and the meeting of its writer, it seemed to her that it would have been the happiest month of her life.  To take the letter with her into exile, to read it every day, but to wait—­wait—­for the real crisis till she could quiet her racing emotions.  One sweet at a time—­not an armful of them.  But the man—­true to his nature—­the man wanted the armful, and at once.  And she had made him wait all these months; she could not, knowing her own heart, put him off longer now.  The cool composure with which, last winter, she had answered his first declaration that he loved her was all gone; the months, of waiting had done more than show him whether his love was real:  they had shown her that she wanted it to be real.

The day was a hard one to get through.  The hours lagged—­yet they flew.  At eight o’clock she went down, feeling as if it were all in her face; but apparently nobody saw anything beyond the undoubted fact that in her white frock she looked as fresh and as vivid as a flower.  At half after ten Rosamond came to her to know if she had received an invitation from Richard Kendrick to go for a horseback ride, adding that she herself was delighted at the thought and had telephoned Stephen, to find that he also was pleased and would be up in time.

“I wonder where he’s going to take us,” speculated Rosamond, in a flutter of anticipation.  “Without doubt it will be somewhere that’s perfectly charming; he knows how to do such things.  Of course it’s all for you, but I shall love to play chaperon, and Stevie and I shall have a lovely time out of it.  I haven’t been on a horse since Dorothy came; I hope I haven’t grown too stout for my habit.  What are you going to wear, Rob?  The blue cloth?  You are perfectly irresistible in that!  Do wear that rakish-looking soft hat with the scarf; it’s wonderfully becoming, if it isn’t quite so correct; and I’m sure Richard Kendrick won’t take us to any stupid fashionable hotel.  He’ll arrange an outdoor affair, I’m confident, with the Kendrick chef to prepare it and the Kendrick servants to see that it is served.  Oh, it’s such a glorious June day!  Aren’t you happy, Rob?”

“If I weren’t it would make me happy to look at you, you dear married child,” and Roberta kissed her pretty sister-in-law, who could be as womanly as she was girlish, and whose companionship, with that of Stephen’s, she felt to be the most discriminating choice of chaperonage Richard could have made.  Stephen and Rosamond, off upon a holiday like this, would be celebrating a little honeymoon anniversary of their own, she knew, for they had been married in June and could never get over congratulating themselves on their own happiness.

CHAPTER XXIII

RICHARD HAS WAKED EARLIER