"Several days ago, Kate;--when I asked you all. I suppose he had something better to do; and really he is so horribly conceited, and represents himself as in such request every where, he is quite welcome to stay away for me."
The matter dropped there, but Katharine was very silent now; and Mr. Mostyn, attributing her depression to the near termination of dinner, and the inevitable move, decided that her pensive tenderness was even more charming than her sparkling allurement.
In the drawing-room she was silent still. When opportunity offered she said to Lady Henmarsh:
"How did you send Mr. Frere your invitation?"
"How? Why, Kate, how inquisitive you are!" and her ladyship laughed,--rather a forced laugh;--"by post, of course. To the Temple; that's all right, isn't it? I said, to meet a few friends, the Guyons, and one or two others. But, my child, I can't stay gossipping with you; there's Mrs. Weldon preparing to consider herself neglected and to take offence."
Katharine was not so much annoyed as she was puzzled by this incident. It is hardly necessary to tell the intelligent reader that no such invitation had ever been sent to Gordon Frere, and that the fabrication had been a happy idea of Mr. Guyon's, and hurriedly imparted to his colleague by a note before dinner. Frere's absence might be very short, and was undoubtedly very precious; and Mr. Guyon had determined to play a game which, if not exactly desperate, was very daring. This was the first card; he had played it, not with perfect, but with tolerable, success. With increased eagerness Katharine looked forward to the morrow; with such eagerness as took the healthy colour from her cheek and the limpid brightness from her eye, and replaced the one by a flickering flush, and the other by a look of anxiety and absorption. The morrow came, and she rode in the Park with her father, but did not see Gordon Frere. The routine of a London day followed; she drove out with Mrs. Stanbourne, and on her return looked over the cards which had been left during her absence, but there was not one bearing the name she longed to see. At dinner her father was in the gay spirits which had distinguished him since he had made Robert Streightley's acquaintance, and took no notice of her silence and dejection. She went to Lady Tredgold's reception, and there endured such pangs of expectation, suspense, mortification and anger, love and longing, as only a mind totally undisciplined by sorrow, and unaccustomed to finding its calculations disturbed by conflicting results, could undergo.
The history of the two days which succeeded that of the Botanical Fête, which had been such an eventful date in Katharine's life, and was destined to remain fixed in her memory for ever, was repeated in those which followed them. Weary waiting and wondering, heartsick longing and anger, the blind wrath of a proud heart stung and outraged, the remorseful relenting of a girlish passionate heart,--through all these, and numberless other phases of feeling and suffering, Katharine Guyon struggled friendless and alone. Pride ruled the girl outwardly, as much as love reigned in her inwardly; and the only person to whom she would have spoken, Mrs. Stanbourne, had left town suddenly, having been called away to a friend who was dangerously ill. Katharine might not have spoken to her indeed, had she been available for purposes of confidence--the calmness and steadiness of the lady's nature might have repelled her, for this was an unfortunate effect which those qualifies had frequently produced upon the impetuous and passionate young girl; but now that she was away, she felt that she would have done so, and regarded Mrs. Stanbourne's absence as an additional grievance and aggravation of the bitterness of her lot. The season was over, town was thinning fast, their own particular set had all broken up, and autumn engagements were either being eagerly discussed or busily entered upon. Days wore on--how wearily, they only who know how long time is to those who watch and wait, can tell--and Katharine did not see the face of Gordon Frere or hear his name. The girl changed visibly under the suffering of this period; the anxious look, so strange to her lustrous eyes, became fixed in them; the soft music of her laugh ceased to ring in the ears of her companions; her girlish gracefulness hardened into something defiant, very attractive to strangers, but which would have made one who loved her sad to see, and apprehensive for her future; but no one who loved her was there to watch the change in Katharine Guyon with prescient eyes.
The day was hot, sultry, breathless; the autumn had fairly set in, and beat fiercely upon the weary Londoners; the sense of oppression produced by the immense circumference of stone and brick was heavy upon such of the world as had any chance of escaping from it. Such as had no chance probably did not like it; "but then," in homely expressive speech, they had to "lump it;" and very few were likely to trouble themselves about them. The last flicker of the gaieties of the season had died out; and even Mr. Guyon had found it impossible to get up a Greenwich dinner-party to comprise more than four individuals, including Robert Streightley and Daniel Thacker. He had avoided his daughter as much as possible of late; and Mr. Streightley had sedulously sought her society, with every kind of tacit encouragement within her father's power to give him. It was the day named for the Greenwich dinner; and Katharine, glad to be alone, and yet feverish and miserable in her solitude, had refused to go to Lady Henmarsh's, there to hold a causerie on their several autumn plans.
"She will drag poor old Sir Timothy to some German baths or French watering-place, and she wants me to back her up in the cruelty," thought Katharine, as she contemptuously twisted up the note, which had contained the invitation, and desired Lady Henmarsh's page to tell his mistress she was busy and could not come; "but I won't. Why can't she go down to Deanthorpe and keep quiet?" She had been dawdling over her luncheon and feeding her Skye terrier, without taking any interest in either occupation; and she now leaned idly against the window-frame and gazed out wearily. She saw the hot, baked streets; she saw the poor old woman opposite sitting by her basket of full-blown blowsy nosegays, sheltering them and herself under the shade of a huge umbrella, fallen from its high estate on some family coach-box, and displaying sundry patches ignominious in their discrepancy with each other and general incongruity with the original fabric. The old woman was yawning, and sleeping by snatches, and Katharine's impatient weariness was increased by watching her. She turned away, and went upstairs to her own room. A newspaper lay on the table in the hall, and she took it up mechanically, and carried it with her. Her own room was spacious and airy, and physical ease and refreshment at least came to her with its stillness and its shade.
She sat down in an arm-chair by the window, and fell a-thinking on the invariable subject; wondering, yearning, raging, as she had done now for days which had run on into weeks, during every hour which had not been tranquillised by the anodyne of sleep. After a while she looked idly at the newspaper in her hand; and in a few minutes her eyes lighted on a paragraph which announced the departure of Lord A---- as British chargé d'affaires to the court of F----, accompanied by Mr. Gordon Frere, who attended his lordship in the character of private secretary, and a numerous suite.