The Finding of Jasper Holt by Grace Livingston Hill

Holt checked the horses and, dismounting, stood beside Jean in the shadow of a great tree by the roadside. Within ten feet of them the light from a wide window streamed out upon the grass in front of a pleasant house built in bungalow style, with broad porches and vine-clad approaches. Hammocks and easy rockers were dimly visible, with a brighter hint of glow and warmth inside the swaying curtains of the window where a piano was sounding pleasantly, and a man and woman were sitting on either side of a table under a prettily shaded reading lamp. A boy's voice called down the stairs and the little girl at the piano stopped playing and answered him; then tinkled on with her music.

All this the two under the tree saw and heard without sensing it. They were looking into one another's eyes in the semi-darkness, realizing that across that streak of light was separation for them, perhaps forever; and that probably this instant here and now was all that was left to them together out of the eternity of the future years.

Jean put her hands timidly on Holt's shoulders. "I've been thinking what it was you wanted to ask of me," she said so softly that if one had been passing it would have seemed but the breathing of the evening air. She waited and Holt looked at her wistfully.

"I have no right," he said. "It wouldn't be square."

The girl's eyes looked steadily, shyly into his, though in the shadow they could see more with the spirit than with the material vision.

"Was it -- -- " she stopped, her heart beating fast. "Was it -- this?"

She leaned forward and kissed him softly on the forehead just where the soft curls waved away; and her lips were like a benediction, that seemed to bring forgiveness and a purging away of the past.

With bowed head as at a sacrament he stood, then softly said:

"You have understood, and I thank you. I had no right to ask, but I can never forget or be false to that."

He stooped and laid his lips reverently on her hands; then lifted her down quickly as if he could not bear to make the sorrow of the parting longer; and together they went forward across the patch of light, up the path and the wide low steps to the porch.

Holt knocked once on the door, not loudly, but there was in the sound a menace that made Jean shudder as she heard it. She reached out her hand to his as if she would take shelter there from something that was coming, that she could not quite understand. Holt pressed her fingers quickly, tightly in a clasp that almost hurt her, and then dropping her hand, stepped back into the shadow of the vines as the tinkling piano stopped. There was a sound of footsteps coming to the door, and of voices in expectation.

The door was flung wide and in the stream of light Mr. and Mrs. Harrington stood looking eagerly out into the darkness, with a little girl of twelve in a white dress, peering shyly but curiously around her mother and a boy of five struggling to get into the centre of the family group. Jean stood alone in the light on the porch, with Holt in the shadow at her side.

"I have brought Miss Grayson," said Holt in a grave, almost challenging tone, from his dark position just outside the stream of light.

But the people in the doorway whose eyes had come from the lighted room saw only the figure of the girl standing in the brightness.

"Oh, Jean! My little sister! You have come at last! " cried Mrs. Harrington, rushing forward to clasp her in her arms, and draw her inside the door; and in the confusion of the greetings the girl's escort was quite forgotten for the moment.

Within the doorway at last they looked about for him and found no one.

"Why, who came with you, child? Where has he gone? " asked her brother-in-law solicitously. "We must ask him in and hear all about your adventures. " He stepped out on the porch and looked down the path in the moonlight, but saw no one anywhere.

"Yes, please ask him in," pleaded Jean, her face illumined with eagerness, "he has been so wonderful! He saved my life. If it hadn't been for him I shouldn't have been here. " And she hurried to the door and peered out into the darkness.

"Of course," said her sister, going to the door to look. "How thoughtless of us not to have welcomed him at once, but we were so overwhelmed to have you at last, after all the anxiety -- you can't think how terrible it has been. Which way could he have gone? James, look down the road either way. He can't be far away. What was his name, Jean? Can't you call after him?"

"He must be over there. " Jean pointed toward the great tree where the horses had stood but a short moment before. "We dismounted just under that tree. He can't have gone far with two horses -- so soon -- -- " and she hurried across the grass to the tree, but there was no sign of horse or man in the deep shadow or the serene moonlight anywhere.