Yet here he was--and he carried a folded paper in his hand.
Gertrude Oliver looked at him from her corner and shivered again. She
had enjoyed the party herself, after all, for she had foregathered with
a Charlottetown acquaintance who, being a stranger and much older than
most of the guests, felt himself rather out of it, and had been glad to
fall in with this clever girl who could talk of world doings and outside
events with the zest and vigour of a man. In the pleasure of his society
she had forgotten some of her misgivings of the day. Now they suddenly
returned to her. What news did Jack Elliott bring? Lines from an old
poem flashed unbidden into her mind--"there was a sound of revelry by
night"--"Hush! Hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell"--why
should she think of that now? Why didn't Jack Elliott speak--if he had
anything to tell? Why did he just stand there, glowering importantly?
"Ask him--ask him," she said feverishly to Allan Daly. But somebody
else had already asked him. The room grew very silent all at once.
Outside the fiddler had stopped for a rest and there was silence there
too. Afar off they heard the low moan of the gulf--the presage of a
storm already on its way up the Atlantic. A girl's laugh drifted up from
the rocks and died away as if frightened out of existence by the sudden
stillness.
"England declared war on Germany today," said Jack Elliott slowly.
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