She alighted with excellent composure, rang the bell and was promptly admitted.
But she had no sooner entered the hall than she found herself face to face with Courtlandt.
He was in evening dress; he looked thoroughly his old self-contained self. Pauline passed at once into the little reception-room just off the hall. Courtlandt followed her. She sank into a chair, slowly untying the strings of her bonnet. A brisk fire crackled on the hearth; she stared into it.
"So you came to me," she said, with a kind of measured apathy.
"Yes," said Courtlandt. "I obeyed the message that you sent me."
Pauline impetuously turned and looked at him. The fire-light struck her face as she did so, and he saw that her gray eyes were swimming in tears.
She made no attempt to master her broken voice. "O Court," she said, "it was ever so good of you to come! I almost doubted if you would! I should have remembered that you—well, that you cared for me in another than a merely cousinly way. But there was no one else—that is, no one near me in blood. It is wonderful how we think of that blood-kinship when something dreadful happens to us. We may not recall it for years, until the blow comes. Then we feel its force, its bond, its claim.... I want you to sit down beside me, Court, and quietly listen. You were always good at listening. Besides, you will have an immense satisfaction, presently; you will learn that your prophecies regarding him were correct. My eyes are open—and in time. I shall never marry him. I shall never marry any one again. And now, listen...."
For a long time, after this, Courtlandt showed himself the most patient of auditors. But he was silent for a good space after his cousin had at length ended, while the fire sputtered and fumed behind the silver filigrees that bordered its hearth, as though it were delivering some adverse, exasperated commentary upon poor Pauline's late disclosures.
But presently Courtlandt spoke. "I think you have had a very fortunate escape," he said. "And I hope you mean, now, to come back and be one of us, again."
"What a way of putting it!" she exclaimed, with a great quivering sigh.