Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/164

152 But today the dread sin of omission had been committed. The tongue was silent. The hands stood stock still, pointed at eight, the fatal hour when Philip's answer had been so sacrilegiously yet so appropriately translated. In the excitement of the wedding, the elder Huntington had neglected the equally important ceremony of the brass key, and when he and the luckless bridegroom returned from the church, the former was almost as perturbed over this discovery as the tragedy at the altar. Without removing hat or coat, he rectified the error. Then, in silence, unbroken save by the reproachful monosyllables of the clock, they went to their rooms.

Now, on three sides of the house are beautiful lawns, shaded by elms and maples, at the rear a garden. Philip's room in the northeast corner has windows overlooking this garden and the East lawn. When the panes turned to yellow, with the suddenly switched-on light, a figure in the shelter of the trees stopped the restless tapping of her foot and intently watched the shadow, now thrown on the shade, and now withdrawn, as its owner paced nervously back and forth.

The front door clicked, and the older man went up the street. Next, the kitchen door opened, throwing a warning pathway of light on the garden, and the cook appeared to discuss with the neighbour's domestic, over the hedge, the untoward event of the evening. On front porch and back, upstairs and down, in all Salthaven, it seemed the only theme worth discussion that night—and would probably so hold first place for many moons to come.

Had the figure under the trees been ignorant of it, she