“Katherine’s dressmaker?”
“Yes; Katherine, I know, never dreamed that she would be so impatient; but I suppose, on hearing that Katherine had gone to England, the woman became frightened.” Peter controlled himself to silence. The very fulness of Hilda’s confidence showed the strain that had been put upon her. “And then,” she went on, as he did not speak, “some of the money had to go to Katherine in England. Poor Kathy! To be pinched like that! She wrote, that at one place it took her last shilling to tip the servants and get her railway ticket to Surrey.”
“Why did she not write to me? Considering all things—“
“Oh!” said Hilda—her tone needed no comment—“we have not quite come to that.” She added presently and gently, “I had money for her.”
Odd took her hand and kissed it; the glove was loose upon it.
“And now,” said Hilda, leaning forward and smiling at him, “you have heard me filer mon chapelet. Tell me what you have been doing.”
“My lazy wanderings in the sun would sound too grossly egotistic after your story.”
“Has my story sounded so dismal? I have been egotistic, then. I had hoped that perhaps you would write to me,” she added, and a delicately malicious little smile lit her face. Odd looked hard at her, with a half-dreamy stare.
“I thought of you,” he said; “I should have liked to write.”
“Well, in the future do, please, when you feel like it.”