"It's awfully thrilling, isn't it? And--isn't Dr. Wilson going to be an
usher?"
Sidney colored. "I believe so."
"Are you going to walk down the aisle with him?"
"I don't know. They had a rehearsal last night, but of course I was not
there. I--I think I walk alone."
The probationer had been instructed to find out other things; so she set to
work with a fan at Sidney's hair.
"You've known Dr. Wilson a long time, haven't you?"
"Ages."
"He's awfully good-looking, isn't he?"
Sidney considered. She was not ignorant of the methods of the school. If
this girl was pumping her-"I'll have to think that over," she said, with a glint of mischief in her
eyes. "When you know a person terribly well, you hardly know whether he's
good-looking or not."
"I suppose," said the probationer, running the long strands of Sidney's
hair through her fingers, "that when you are at home you see him often."
Sidney got off the window-sill, and, taking the probationer smilingly by
the shoulders, faced her toward the door.
"You go back to the girls," she said, "and tell them to come in and see me
when I am dressed, and tell them this: I don't know whether I am to walk
down the aisle with Dr. Wilson, but I hope I am. I see him very often. I
like him very much. I hope he likes me. And I think he's handsome."
She shoved the probationer out into the hall and locked the door behind
her.
That message in its entirety reached Carlotta Harrison. Her smouldering
eyes flamed. The audacity of it startled her. Sidney must be very sure of
herself.
She, too, had not slept during the day. When the probationer who had
brought her the report had gone out, she lay in her long white night-gown,
hands clasped under her head, and stared at the vault-like ceiling of her
little room.
She saw there Sidney in her white dress going down the aisle of the church;
she saw the group around the altar; and, as surely as she lay there, she
knew that Max Wilson's eyes would be, not on the bride, but on the girl who
stood beside her.
The curious thing was that Carlotta felt that she could stop the wedding if
she wanted to. She'd happened on a bit of information--many a wedding had
been stopped for less. It rather obsessed her to think of stopping the
wedding, so that Sidney and Max would not walk down the aisle together.