Katharine sat pulling at a knot in her silk. She was a little flushed and frowning, but not looking much as if she had come to the crucial moment of her life.
“You see it all now?” said her mother.
“I don’t know—I had much rather get rid of it all. That is, if it isn’t wrong.”
“Wrong?”
Kate was silent; she knew quite well that in yielding to her impatience of her mother’s hints, to her dread of the associations of her brief love story, and to the general weariness of her unsatisfactory life, she had acted entirely against the spirit of her uncle’s letter, and had relapsed into the childish love of ease and submission to her mother’s ascendancy, out of which she had been dimly struggling.
“There is no use in my saying anything till I’m twenty-one,” she said.
“But you will not retract, Katharine, you will not fall again into temptation? Give me your promise—surely I may ask for that now.”
“No, mamma,” said Kate, “I won’t promise. I’d rather get rid of it, a great deal, especially if you promise me not to go back to Applehurst. But all the same, I had better not promise, for that would be the same thing as doing it now. I’ll wait till I’m one-and-twenty.”
“But you wish now to restore it?”
“Oh yes, I’m sure it has been no good to me,” said Kate, and gathering up her work, she left the room.