’I think I would not go out in such a storm as this with my back if Queen Victoria was to be there,’ John answered gruffly.  ’And what would be the use?’ he continued.  ’I have been to meet that woman, if she is a woman, with the outlandish name, more than fifty times, I’ll bet; he don’t know what he is talking about when he gets on her track.  And s’posin’ she does come, she can find somebody to fetch her.  She ain’t going to walk.’

This seemed reasonable; and as Frank’s sympathies were with his coachman and horses rather than with Gretchen and his brother, he decided with John that he need not go, but added, laughingly, as he saw the man walk across the floor as well as he ever did on his way to the woodshed: 

‘Seems to me your broken back has recovered its elasticity very soon.’

To this John made no reply except an inaudible growl, and Frank returned to the library, resolving not to go near his brother until after train time, but to let him think that John had gone to the station.

At half-past five, however, Arthur sent for him, and said: 

‘Has he gone?  It must be time.’

’Not quite; it is only half-past five.  The train does not come until half-past six, and is likely to be late,’ was Frank’s reply.

‘Yes, I know,’ Arthur continued, ’but he should be there on time.  Tell him to start at once, and take an extra robe with him, and say to Charles that I will have sherry to-night, and champagne, too, and Hamburg grapes, and—­’

The remainder of his speech was lost on Frank, who was hurrying down the stairs with a guilty feeling in his heart, although he felt that the end justified the means, and that under the circumstances he was justified in deceiving his half-crazy brother.  Still he was ill at ease.  He had no faith in Arthur’s presentiments, and no idea that any one bound for Tracy Park would be on the train that night, but he could not shake off a feeling of anxiety, amounting almost to a dread of some impending calamity, which possibly the sending of John to the station might have averted, and going to a window in the library, he, too, stood looking out into the night, trying not to believe that he was watching for some possible arrival, when, above the storm, he heard the shrill scream of the locomotive as it stopped for a moment and then dashed on into the white snow clouds; trying to believe, too, that he was not glad, as the minutes became a quarter, the quarter a half, and the half three-quarters, until at last he heard the clock strike the half-hour past seven, and nobody had come.

‘I shall have to tell Arthur,’ he thought, and, with something like hesitancy, he started for his brother’s room.

Arthur was standing before the fire, with his arm thrown caressingly across the chair where Gretchen was to sit, when Frank opened the door and advanced a step or two across the threshold.

‘Has she come?  I did not see the carriage.  Where is she?’ Arthur cried, springing swiftly forward, while his bright, eager eyes darted past his brother to the open door-way and out into the hall.