There was a stir within, but the door did not open. Meanwhile, I had sealed and thrust forth the letter I had held concealed in my breast pocket. "Give her this, too," I signified, and pointed to the crack under the door. He took the letter, laid the telegram on it, and pushed them both in. Then he stood up and eyed the unresponsive panels with the set look of a man who does not easily yield his purpose. "I will wait for the answer," he shouted through the keyhole, and falling back he took up his stand against the opposite wall. I could not keep him company there. Withdrawing into a big dormer window, I waited with beating heart to see if her door would open. Apparently not, yet as I still lingered, I heard the lock turn, followed by the sound of a measured but hurried step. Dashing from my retreat, I reached the main hall in time to see Miss Murray disappear toward the staircase. This was well, and I was about to follow when, to my astonishment, I perceived Dutton standing in the doorway she had just left, staring down at the floor with a puzzled look. "She didn't pick up the letters," he cried, in amazement. "She just walked over them. What shall I do now? It's the strangest thing I ever saw." "Take them to the little boudoir over the porch," I suggested. "Mr. Sinclair is there and if she is not on her way to join him now she certainly will be soon." Without a word Dutton caught up the letters and made for the stairs. Left to await the result, I found myself so worked upon that I wondered how much longer I should find myself able to endure these shifts of feeling and constantly recurring moments of extreme suspense. To escape the torture of my own thoughts, or, possibly, to get some idea of how Dorothy was sustaining an ordeal which was fast destroying my own self-possession, I prepared to go down stairs. What was my astonishment in passing the little boudoir on the second floor, to find its door ajar and the place empty. Either the interview between Sinclair and Gilbertine had been very much curtailed, or it had not yet taken place. With a heart heavy with forebodings I no longer sought to analyze, I made my way down and reached the lower step of the great staircase just as a half-dozen girls, rushing from different quarters of the hall, surrounded the heavy form of Mr. Armstrong coming from his own little room. Their questions made a small hubbub. With a good-natured gesture, he put them all back and, raising his voice, said to the assembled crowd: "It has been decided by Miss Murray that, under the circumstances, it will be wiser for her to postpone the celebration of her marriage to some time and place less fraught with mournful suggestions. A telegram has just been sent to the bishop to that effect, and while we all suffer from this disappointment, I am sure there is no one here who will not see the propriety of her decision."