“Oh, you foolish, foolish child!” cried Mary, laughing; and she kissed her. “Come, come; say that you will be good to my poor brother?”
“I love him, but I cannot ground my happiness on a wrong.”
“Your happiness would be grounded on a right; the wrong was a mere incidental. Peter must wait, I see. Perhaps you will own some day that that was ample expiation.”
CHAPTER XIV
ONE October day Hilda received a queer little note from Katherine. That Katherine had spent a month in Scotland and was now on a yacht with a party of friends, Hilda knew, and the note was dated from Amalfi.
“Why don’t you marry Peter, you little goose?” was all it said.
Hilda trembled as she read. Katherine’s scorn and Katherine’s nobility seemed to breathe from it.
“I am not as base as you think,” was her answer.
Katherine received this answer in Amalfi. She had come in from a walk with Allan Hope along the road that runs above the sea between Amalfi and Sorrento, and one of the yachting party, a girl who much admired Katherine, was waiting for her before the hotel holding the letter, an excuse for the excited whisper with which she gave it to her.
“Dear Miss Archinard, he is here!”