Speechless, almost paralyzed in his despair, he tottered to the steps and disappeared.

CHAPTER XLVII

LIGHT AT EVENTIDE

As Mrs. Wheaton crossed the hallway from a brief call on a neighbor, Vinton Arnold passed her.  She noted by the light of the lamp in her hand that his pallor was ghostlike, and she asked quickly: 

“Vere is Miss Jocelyn?”

He paid no more heed to her than if he were a shadow of a man, and went by her with wavering, uncertain steps, without a word.  In sudden alarm she hastened to the roof, and found Mildred kneeling by her chair, weeping and almost speechless from grief.  She took the girl in her arms, and said excitedly, “Vat did he say to you?”

“Oh,” sobbed Mildred, “my heart is broken at last.  I feel as mamma did when she said her heart was bleeding away.  Mrs. Wheaton, I shall stay with you now as long as I live, and it seems as if it wouldn’t be very long.  Never speak of him again—­never speak of it to a living soul.  He asked that which would banish you and Roger—­dear, brave, patient Roger—­from my side forever, and I will never see his face again.  Oh, oh, I wish I could die!”

“I’m a plain voman,” Mrs. Wheaton said grimly, “but I took the measure of ’im soon as I clapped my heyes on ’im; but, Millie, me darlin’, you couldn’t be so cruel as to break hour ’earts by dying for sich a man.  You vould make the vorld black for us hall, yer know.  Come, dear, come vith me.  I’ll take care hof yer.  I’m not fine like ’im that’s gone, thank the Lord, but I’ll never ax ye to do haught that Mr. Ventvorth vouldn’t bless,” and she half supported the exhausted, trembling girl to her room, and there was tender and tireless in her ministrations.  In the early dawn, when at last Mildred slept for an hour or two, she wrote, in a half-eligible scrawl, to Roger, “Come back.  Millie wants you.”

His presence in response was prompt indeed.  On the second morning after the events described, Mildred sat in her chair leaning back with closed eyes.  Mrs. Wheaton was away at work, and her eldest daughter was watching the little brood of children on the sidewalk.  A decided knock at the door caused the young girl to start up with apprehension.  She was so nervously prostrated that she trembled like a leaf.  At last she summoned courage and opened the door slightly, and when she saw Roger’s sun-burned, honest face she welcomed him as if he were a brother indeed.

He placed her gently in her chair again, and said, with a keen look into her eyes, “How is this, Millie?  I left you happy and even blooming, and now you appear more pale and broken than ever before.  You look as if you had been seriously ill.  Oh, Millie, that couldn’t be, and you not let me know,” and he clasped her hand tightly as he spoke.

She buried her burning face on his shoulder, and said, in a low, constrained tone, “Roger, I’ve told Mr. Arnold this much about you—­I said I’d die ten thousand deaths rather than cause you to blush for me.”