The Beloved Stranger - By Grace Livingston Hill Page 0,6
of the awfulness there swung a sweet-toned silver sound, a clock just outside the door striking the hour in unmistakable terms, and Carter McArthur started away from the girl, fairly flinging her in his haste, till she huddled down on her knees in the corner sobbing.
“Shut up, can’t you!” said the man wildly as he rushed over to the mirror and began to brush the powder marks from his otherwise immaculate coat. “Can’t you see you’re goading me to desperation? I’ve got to go instantly! I’m going to be late!”
“And what about me?” wailed the girl. “Would you rather I took poison and lay down in this room to die? Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to meet you when you came back from the church?”
But with a last desperate brush of his coat Carter snapped out the light and swung out into the upper hall, slamming the door significantly behind him and hurrying down the stairs with brisk steps that tried to sound merry for the benefit of the servants in the hall below.
The girl’s voice died away into a helpless little frightened sob, and then all was still.
And Sherrill stood there in the utter darkness trying to think, trying to gather her scattered senses and realize what had happened, what might happen next. That something cataclysmic had just taken place that would change all her after life she knew; but just for that first instant or two after she heard her bridegroom’s footsteps go down the stairs and out the front door, she had not gotten her bearings. It was all that she could do just then to stand still and clutch her great bouquet while the earth reeled under her trembling feet.
The next instant she heard a sound, soft, scarcely perceptible to any but preternaturally quickened senses, that brought her back to the present, the necessity of the moment and the shortness of time.
The sound was the tiniest possible hint of stirring garments and a stealthy step from the corner where the weeping girl had been flung when the angry, frightened bridegroom made his hasty exit.
Instantly Sherrill was in possession of herself and reaching forward accurately with accustomed fingers, touching the switch that sent a flood of light into the sitting room.
Then Sherrill in her white robes stepped to the doorway and confronted the frightened, cowering, blinking interloper, who fell back against the wall, her hands outspread and groping for the door, her eyes growing wide with horror as she caught the full version of her lover’s bride.
Chapter 2
For just an instant they faced one another, the bride in her beauty, and her woebegone rival, and in spite of herself Sherrill could not help thinking how pretty this other girl was. Even though she had been crying and there were tears on her lashes. She was not a girl whom crying made hideous. It rather gave her the sweet dewy look of a child in trouble.
She stood wide-eyed, horror and fear on her face, the soft gold of her hair just showing beneath a chic little hat. She was dressed in a stylish street suit of dark blue with slim correct shoes and long-wristed wrinkled white doeskin gloves. Even as she stood, her arms outspread and groping for refuge against the unfriendly wall, she presented an interesting picture. Sherrill could not help feeling sorry for her. There was nothing arrogant about her now. Just the look of a frightened child at bay among enemies.
“How long have you known him?” asked Sherrill, trying to keep her voice from trembling.
The other girl burst forth in an anguished tone, her hands going quickly to her throat, which moved convulsively: “Ever since we were kids!” she said with a choking sob at the end of her words. “Always we’ve been crazy about each other, even in high school. Then after he got started up in the city, he sent for me to be his secretary so we could be nearer to each other till we could afford to get married. It has never been any different till you came. It was you—you who took him away from me—!” and the girl buried her hands in the soggy little handkerchief and gave a great sob that seemed to come from the depths of her being.
Sherrill felt a sudden impulse to put her face down in her lovely roses and sob, too. It somehow seemed to be herself and not this other girl who was sobbing over there against the wall. Oh, how