But I was desparate.
Alas, I was too late.
The caterer's man, who had taken Patrick's place in a
hurry, was at the punch bowl, and father was gone. I was just in
time to see him take H. into his library and close the door.
Here words fail me. I knew perfectly well that beyond that
door H, whom I had invented and who therefore simply did not
exist, was asking for my Hand. I made up my mind at once to run
away and go on the stage, and I had even got part way up the
stairs, when I remembered that, with a dollar for the picture
and five dollars for the violets and three dollars for the hat
pin I had given Sis, and two dollars and a quarter for mother's
handkercheif case, I had exactly a dollar and seventy-five cents
in the world.
_I was trapped_.
I went up to my room, and sat and waited. Would father be
violent, and throw H. out and then come upstairs, pale with fury
and disinherit me? Or would the whole Familey conspire together,
when the people had gone, and send me to a convent? I made up my
mind, if it was the convent, to take the veil and be a nun. I
would go to nurse lepers, or something, and then, when it was
too late, they would be sorry.
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