“And you’ll end by wanting to look at everything just as she does, because you like her so much and feel so indebted to her,” said Kate. Then, with an accent that was fairly tragic, she added: “Oh, she knows it, she knows it, and that’s what she wants to keep you here for! She’ll end by wanting you never to marry, and offering to leave you all her money if you’ll promise not to do it.”
Esther drew her arm away from her sister, and the flush that swept over her face was plain even in the twilight. “I think you’d better leave all that to Aunt Katharine and me. It doesn’t strike me as coming under your charge,” she said proudly. And then the coldness in her voice melted with a sudden heat as she added: “But suppose I should come to see things as she does—suppose I should come to take a different view of life from what I did once, what then? I’ll go where my honest convictions lead me. It’s my right and my duty, and I shall do it.”
It sounded very brave and solemn in the twilight. A whippoorwill from the woods behind Aunt Katharine’s house had the only word that followed, and he called it across the stillness with a long soft cadence that sounded like a wail.
They turned their faces to the house and walked toward it without speaking. It was a relief to both when Stella came out to meet them.
“I thought you were never coming,” she said to Esther. “Dear me, I shall be glad when I get you in Boston, with Aunt Katharine too far away to use her magnet on you.”
A half hour later Kate was in conference with Tom again. She had called him into the shadows of the barn, and her voice was almost a whisper as she said:—
“Tom, I want you to wake me up to-morrow morning when you come down to do the milking. I’m going to make a call before breakfast.”
Tom gave a low whistle. “At that time in the morning! Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To Aunt Katharine’s,” she said.
Tom gave another whistle, this time a louder one. “Great Scott!” he ejaculated. “So you’re going to keep it right up, are you?”