The Beloved Stranger - By Grace Livingston Hill Page 0,26

own room and miraculously found Gemmie there before her, the suitcase in her hand.

“Your aunt Pat thought you might be wanting this,” said the woman respectfully, no hint of her former surprise in her eyes, no suggestion that anything was different from what it had been when the old servant left her there in her wedding dress ready to go to the church.

“Oh yes!” said Sherrill in relief. “You’ll help me, won’t you, Gemmie?”

With half-frenzied fingers Sherrill went to work, laying out things from her suitcase and bags, separating them into two piles upon the bed. The black satin evening dress, the orchid, and the yellow—those ought to be enough. Aunt Pat wasn’t especially crazy about any of those. She put aside the things that were marked with her own initials; not one of those should go. She shut her lips tight and drew in a sharp little breath of pain.

Gemmie seemed to understand. She gathered those things up quickly and put them away in the bureau drawers. Gemmie’s powers of selection were even keener than Sherrill’s.

It did not take long, three or four minutes, and Gemmie’s skillful fingers did the rest.

“There, now, Miss Sherrill, I can manage,” she said. “You run back. They’ll be missing you.”

It was as if Gemmie was also a conspirator.

“Thank you, Gemmie dear!” said Sherrill with a catch in her voice like a sob, and closed the door quickly behind her.

Copeland was waiting at the foot of the stairs, and they found places saved for them close to the bride’s table, a little table for two, and the eyes of all upon them as they sat down.

Sherrill saw the Markham sisters looking eagerly from Copeland to herself and back again, and nodding their heads violently to one another as they swept in large mouthfuls of creamed mushrooms and chicken salad. She had an impulse to put her head down on the table and laugh, or cry. She knew she was getting very near to the limit of her self-control.

But Copeland knew it also, and managed to keep her busy telling him who the different people were.

After all the ordeal was soon over, even to the cutting of the wedding cake by a bride very much at her ease and enjoying her privileges to the last degree. If Arla never was happy again, she was tonight.

And then after all the matter of the license, which loomed like a peril in Sherrill’s thoughts, was arranged so easily. Just a quiet word from the butler to Copeland, a quiet sign from Copeland to the best man. Sherrill had put money in her little pearl evening bag, which she slipped to Copeland as they went upstairs together while the bride was throwing Sherrill’s bouquet to the noisy clamoring bridesmaids down in the hall. Sherrill and Copeland were presumably escorting the bride and groom to their rooms to change into traveling garb, and no one noticed them enter the little room off the back hall where the representative of the law was waiting.

Just a few quiet questions from the grizzly old man who had come to make the legal part right, and who looked at them as only three more in the long procession that came to him day by day. They waited, those five, the best man doing his best not to seem too curious about it all, while those important seals were placed, and the proper signature affixed, and then Sherrill hurried the bride away to dress. A frightened, almost tearful bride now—afraid of her, Sherrill was sure.

Almost the last lap of this terrible race she was running! There would be one more. She would have to face Aunt Pat, but that she dared not think about yet. This present session with the bride who had taken her place was going to be perhaps the hardest of all.

Chapter 5

Sherrill led her white bride through the two middle rooms again, hurriedly, silently, remembering with sharp thrills of pain all that had happened earlier in the evening. She dreaded intensely the moment when they two would be shut in together again. One would have to say something. One could not be absolutely silent, and somehow her tongue felt heavy, and her brain refused to think.

But Gemmie was there! Dear Gemmie! Ah! She had forgotten Gemmie! What a relief! Gemmie with her most professional air of dignity.

The frightened little bride did not feel relief, however, at her presence. She faltered at the doorway and gave Sherrill a pitiful look of protest.