The Everlasting Whisper

"It's an outrage," cried Mrs. Gaynor, "to retail all that to Mark King. What business of his is it if Mr. Gratton does go to Coloma, or anywhere else?"

"That's for you and papa to argue out," said Gloria serenely.

"We are going back to San Francisco to-morrow!"

"I'm not. You know I'm not ready to go yet."

"That is very undutiful, Gloria," said her mother anxiously. "When your own mother----"

"Oh, let's not get tragic! And, anyway, papa wanted us to stay until Mr. King came, so that we could tell him."

"Jim Spalding will be here; he can tell----"

"Why, mamma! After papa has trusted to us to see that his message is delivered!" Gloria looked shocked, incredulous. "Surely----"

So they waited for Mark King to come again out of the forest. All the next day Gloria, dressed very daintily and looking so lovely in her expectancy that even old Jim Spalding's eyes followed her everywhere, watched from the porch or a window or her place by the creek. She was sure that he would step out of the shadows into the sun with that familiar appearance of having just materialized from among the tree trunks; over and over she was prepared, with prettily simulated surprise, to greet his coming. But the day passed, night drove them indoors to a cosy fireplace and lights and fragments of music which Gloria played wistfully or crashingly in bursts of impatience, and still he did not come. Mrs. Gaynor went off to bed at nine o'clock; Gloria, suddenly absorbed in a book, elected to sit up and finish her chapter. She outwatched the log fire; at eleven o'clock the air was chill, and Gloria as she went upstairs shivered a little and felt tired and vaguely sad.

The next day she put on another pretty dress, did her hair in her favourite way, and went about the house as gay as a lark. The day dragged by; King did not come. By nightfall the look in Gloria's eyes had altered, and a stubborn expression played havoc with the tenderer curves of her mouth. She resented at this late date King's way of going; not only had he not told her good-bye, he had left no word with her father for her. She sat smiling over a letter received some days ago from Gratton--after she had retrieved the letter from a heap of crumpled papers in her bedroom waste-paper basket. She read to her mother fragments, bright, gossipy remarks in Gratton's clever way of saying them; she wrote a long, dashingly composed answer.