“And Hilda?” Peter questioned, as he and Katherine went into the dining-room together. “Hilda is well? And as lovely as ever?”
“Well, and as lovely as ever,” Katherine assured him. “She is not here because she rarely goes out. Papa and I are the frivolous members of the family. Mamma goes in for culture, and Hilda for art.” Peter had a good look at her as they sat side by side.
Katherine was no more beautiful than in childhood, but she was distinctly interesting and—yes—distinctly charming. Her black eyes, deeply set under broad eyebrows, held the same dominant significance; humorous, cynical, clever eyes. Her white teeth gave a brilliant gayety to her smile. There was distinction in her coiffure—the thick deeply rippled hair parted on one side, and coiled smoothly from crown to neck; and Peter recognized in her dress a personal taste as distinctive—the long unbroken lines of her nasturtium velvet gown were untinged by any hint of so-called artistic dowdiness, and yet the dress wrinkled about her waist as she moved with a daring elegance far removed from the moulded conventionality of the other women’s bodices. This glowing gown was cut off the shoulders; Katherine’s shoulders were beautiful, and they were triumphantly displayed.
“And now, please tell me,” said Peter, “how it comes that I haven’t seen you for ten years?”
“How comes it that we have not seen you? You have been everywhere, and so have we; really it is odd that we should never have met. Of course you know that we left the Priory only a year after you went to India?”
Peter nodded.
“I was dismayed to find you gone when I got back. I heard vague rumors of Florence, and when I went there one winter you had disappeared.”
“We must have been in Dresden. How I hated it! All the shabby second-rate culture of the world seems to gravitate to Dresden. We had to let the Priory, you know. We are so horribly poor.”
Katherine’s smiling assertion was not carried out in her appearance, yet the statement put a bond of familiarity between them; Katherine spoke as to an old friend who had a right to know.
“Then we had a year or two at Dinard—loathsome place I think it! Then Florence again, and at last Paris, and here we have been for over three years, and here we shall probably stick for who knows how long! Hilda’s painting gives us a reasonable background; at least as reasonable as such exiles can hope for.”