"Professor Thornton," she said, "yesterday I met an enemy of yours. It sounds melodramatic, perhaps, to speak of an enemy. Nevertheless, that was what she appeared to me. You probably know who she is—a Mrs Stanhope. But you cannot know how she speaks of you. No one could imagine it, unless one heard it for oneself."
His drawn face seemed to become thinner as she spoke.
"She has always disliked me," he said in a painfully strained voice.
"It is not merely dislike, it is malice," Katharine said. "It would not matter so much if you were by yourself in the world. But there is the boy to think of. Keep him away from her. She might poison his heart against you. It would be cruel for him, and cruel for you."
The expression of intense anxiety on the man's face filled Katharine's heart with pity.
"Ah," he said, as if the words were torn from him. "That is the bitterness of it; he might turn against me simply and solely because he could not understand; he——"
He broke off and looked at Katharine hopelessly. He appeared to be appealing to her for help in his distress; she could almost have heard his voice saying:
"What shall I do—what shall I do? Help me."
But the next moment his pride and reserve got the better of his momentary weakness. He gathered himself together. He asked for no details, and made no attempt to justify himself in her eyes. He did not even give a passing thought as to how much or how little she knew of his sad story. He felt instinctively that she believed in him.
He came across to her, and leaned over the table by which she was standing.