“Even if you had been attracted for a moment by a man who had something to offer besides a little sentiment, that would be gone a few brief months after marriage, still it would be your duty to yourself and to your family to make the sensible marriage. You are not a foolish girl. You are not a child. You know what the substantial things in life are.”
“I can’t marry him,” repeated Catherine stubbornly.
“Has Wallingford been making love to you?” The anger was close to the surface in Mrs. Hollister’s voice.
Catherine smiled bitterly. “No,” she answered, “he has not. He cares nothing for me. But I can’t marry Lord Frothingham—and I won’t.”
“You must not say that, Catherine,” said her mother sternly. “It is a great shock to me to find that you cannot be trusted. If you refused to marry the man you have voluntarily engaged yourself to, I should never forgive you.”
Catherine’s eyes sank before her mother’s. “The engagement must be announced at once,” her mother went on. “You will change your mind when you have thought it over, and when you realise what my feelings are.”
“I can’t——” began Catherine monotonously.
“I wish to hear no more about it, child,” interrupted her mother, her eyes glittering a forewarning of the hate she would have for a daughter who disobeyed her. “To-morrow we will talk of it again.”
Catherine and her mother arose, and each faced the other for a moment—two inflexible wills. For Mrs. Hollister had made one error, and that fatal, in training her daughter. She had not broken her will in childhood, when the stiffest inherited will can be made to yield; she had only subdued it, driven it to cover. She had left her her individuality. But she did not know this; so, she saw her daughter’s looks, saw her daughter leave the room with resolution in every curve of her figure, and was not in the least disturbed as to the event. The idea that she, Maria Hollister, could be defied by anyone in her family—or out of it—could not form in her mind. “It is fortunate,” she said to herself, “that Wallingford is leaving early in the morning. I’ll announce the engagement at dinner to-night.”
Catherine went to change her dress, and then searched for Frothingham. He was alone in the billiard room, half asleep, on one of the wall lounges. At sight of him—she saw him before he saw her—her courage wavered. Yes, he was a decent sort of chap; and she was treating him badly, despicably—had bargained fairly with him, had used the contract publicly to aggrandise herself at his expense, was about to break her contract and humiliate him, injure him, through no fault of his. He had been fair with her, she had been false with him, was about to be base. “I can’t,” she said to herself. “At least, not in cold blood.”