Page:Restless Earth.djvu/215

Nothing else? She had everything? Yes.

She heard the car swing round the corner of the street and move away down the hill.

She stared at the faintly luminous leadlight in the door and listened intently for Harley’s approaching foot-steps.

They did not come.

For long minutes she waited, and the silence continued.

Then, faintly, as though it were opened by a stealthy hand, the click of the gate.

Silence.

Where was he? By which door would he enter? She had counted upon hearing his footsteps upon the path, but it seemed that he waited by the gate, or—or that he came stealthily.

Patricia’s heart beat faster and louder. It seemed to her that its beating echoed in the empty hall, that it must inevitably awaken Grace.

The sweat of growing fear moistened her hands and chilled her forehead.

Something malignant was abroad! She knew it! She could feel it! Feel it through the solid door!

A loose board thudded softly upon the verandah!

Harley was there. She could almost see him!

And yet, why should she fear———?

Not until this moment did she doubt that Harley had come in response to one or both of the two first telegrams, or the letter, in all of which it had been definitely stated that Grace lived and awaited him at home.

Like a blow in the face came the conviction that he had come in response to the wire she had sent only the previous morning. The others had missed him.

He had come back, not expecting to see his wife alive, but to see the woman who had sent his wife and child to their deaths. The ambiguity of the message—an ambiguity which had struck her as