She cried a little as she spoke, in a half melancholy, half impatient way.
“But you’ll come after Christmas and stay with Uncle Kingsworth, and then we shall see each other again?”
“Oh yes, and I shall be as tired of Kingsworth as I used to be of Applehurst. Nothing turns out well for mamma and me.”
Indeed, when Emberance, reluctantly enough, went home for Christmas, Katharine felt as if all the unsatisfactoriness of the old Applehurst life had returned, added to the new dreariness that hung over Kingsworth.
Strange puzzle, while the mother sat longing and praying that her child might have strength to sacrifice her worldly prospects to her sense of truth, the daughter felt that the sacrifice had all been made already, and that to push the burden away would be likely to come in the light of a relief.
She had lost her lover, and had in fact discovered that she had never inspired him with any real affection; and life with her mother at Kingsworth seemed but a dreary prospect. She hated the responsibilities in which she was involved, and was altogether vexed, disappointed and unhappy.
But perhaps the very fact that life had opened to her in so many aspects all at once, had prevented one of them from being utterly overpowering. Her feelings had not had time to become full grown, and as she read a story of an utterly heart-broken maiden, she thought to herself,—
“After all, I don’t feel quite like this.”
And happily, it never occurred to Kate that it was a pity that she did not.
She was quite enough to be pitied, poor little thing, under the weight of her troubles, even if her heart was only three quarters broken.