The doctor looked at her with affectionate reproof, much as if she had been a naughty child.
"Why, you little snip!" he said whimsically, as he pulled her toward him determinedly. "I've a notion to chastise you! Talking like that with the whole of life before you! Such cluttered nonsense!"
Still talking he started toward the stairs and Willem's room, and Kathrien sank into a chair; but the doctor changed his mind, turned, and came back to her again.
"Kathrien, I understand you've not a penny to your name," he said gruffly, "unless you marry Frederik. He has inherited you—along with the orchids and the tulips."
He put his arm around her with a gentle, protective movement as he went on:
"Don't let that influence you. If Peter's plans bind you—and you look as if they did—my door's open. Don't let the neighbours' opinions and a few silver spoons," glancing towards the wedding gifts, "stand in the way of your whole future."
Having thus opened his warm Scotch heart and his home to the motherless girl, it was indicative of his character that he should give her no chance to thank him. Before she could speak, he had run up the stairs, placed his cigar on the little table in the upper hall, and hurried into Willem's room.
Outside the sky grew blacker and blacker, darkening the room where Kathrien sat. Suddenly she rose from her chair, and stretching out her arms, gave a cry that was dragged from her very soul.
"Oh! Oom Peter, Oom Peter, why did you do it? Why did you do it?"
She looked all at once a woman. No longer the carefree, happy girl she had been but a few short weeks before. Standing thus, her beautiful face full of agony, she did not hear Marta as she came in from the dining-room to carry upstairs the dainty wedding clothes for the morrow—a mass of filmy, fluffy white, laid carefully over both arms.