_THE INNER SHRINE_





_THE INNER SHRINE_

I


Though she had counted the strokes of every hour since midnight, Mrs.
Eveleth had no thought of going to bed. When she was not sitting bolt
upright, indifferent to comfort, in one of the stiff-backed, gilded
chairs, she was limping, with the aid of her cane, up and down the long
suite of salons, listening for the sound of wheels. She knew that George
and Diane would be surprised to find her waiting up for them, and that
they might even be annoyed; but in her state of dread it was impossible
to yield to small considerations.

She could hardly tell how this presentiment of disaster had taken hold
upon her, for the beginning of it must have come as imperceptibly as the
first flicker of dusk across the radiance of an afternoon. Looking back,
she could almost make herself believe that she had seen its shadow over
her early satisfaction in her son's marriage to Diane. Certainly she had
felt it there before their honeymoon was over. The four years that had
passed since then had been spent--or, at least, she would have said so
now--in waiting for the peril to present itself.