It was about four in the morning; and the cold dismal chill peculiar to that ghastly hour had stolen over the room; and Katharine had begun to shiver and yawn under its influence. Mrs. Clarke woke with a guilty start, softly raked the fire together and replenished it, and, in answer to Katharine's beckoning finger, approached the bed.
"There's no change--no, no change," said Mrs. Clarke; and she shook her head gravely.
"Are you sure?" said Katharine; "I thought his face looked colder and grayer. Don't you think the eyelids are heavier and more nearly shut?"
Mrs. Clarke took a candle, and held it close to the wan face. There was no change perceptible to her; and the "muffled-drum" beat of the heart told of life still lingering.
"No, my dear," said the old woman compassionately; "he is not gone yet, nor going; but Lor' ha' mercy, how cold you are! why, you're shivering. I'll go and fetch a teapot and a kettle, and make some tea. No; the kitchen-fire is alight. If you don't mind being alone, I'll make it downstairs; it's quicker done; and I am sure you want it."
"I do want it, Clarke," said Katharine, shuddering. "The dawn is coming, I suppose; and the cold strikes into my blood. I shall be glad of the tea."
Mrs. Clarke went away on her errand. Katharine, all her senses quickened, heard her step upon each stair until she reached the hall. A strange, lonely, nervous feeling came over her, and she rose from her seat by the bedside, and went over to the fireplace. As she stood idly by the chimneypiece, an unusually strong nicker of the flame shone upon something bright which lay upon the ground. Katharine stooped, and picked up a bunch of keys and a handful of crumpled papers. She laid the keys upon the mantelshelf, and mechanically turned over the papers. The card of the races she threw into the fire, the others she smoothed out; and finding some memoranda apparently containing calculations among them, she thought it would be well to put them away safely. With the intention of doing so, she took up the keys again, and opened the heavy door of the oak cabinet.
Mr. Guyon, like many men devoted to the business of pleasure, was very orderly in his arrangements, and kept all his papers with an enviable degree of precision. The long shallow drawers of the cabinet had each its neat parchment label, indicating the contents; and the lowest of the range bore the superscription, "miscellaneous letters." Katharine pulled the pendent brass ring attached to this drawer with a little more force than was necessary to open it. The drawer slid out easily, and the whole of its contents were exposed to her view. At the back, in the right-hand corner, lay a small packet, slipped into an elastic band, on which her quick eye caught her own name, written in a hand she knew well--her own name, as it had been--"Miss Guyon"--and a date scrawled in the corner. The blood rushed hotly into Katharine's face as she took the packet out of the drawer and carried it to the fireplace, where she examined it by the light of a [xxx ?] lamp. It consisted of four letters: the uppermost that on which her name was written: the undermost was placed in the bands so that the address did not show; but a line was written on xxxx Mr. Guyon's hand--"shown to R.S."
Katharine sat down in the chair vacated by the housekeeper and deliberated. In her hand she held a packet of papers, which she felt concerned her deeply. Here was a letter in Gordon Frere's hand--a letter whose date was that of the very date which had begun her hopeless watching and waiting, in the time which, until this moment, had seemed so far, so illimitably past, but now in an instant was brought near again, and revived in all its pain and anger. Here was a letter which must have been written that day when he had sent her the music and his card, as she had believed without a word. A vague sense of treachery, something which led her intuitively to an approximate suspicion of the truth, came into Katharine's mind. She glanced at the bed, and turned away trembling. What was she about to learn? Something, she felt instinctively, which must change all her life. Then she drew out the note directed to "Miss Guyon," and read it. It was that which Gordon Frere had written to Katharine, from Cramer's, after he had left Charles Yeldham, with the intention of starting by the next train, on his pilgrimage of hope, to his father's rectory. It was a bright gay note, with a pleasant allusion to their talk about the music; a strong expression of disappointment about Katharine's not being at the ball; an intimation that his absence would be as short as he could make it; and that he hoped to see her immediately on his return. Katharine dropped the hand that held the note heavily into her lap; had she received it, what might she have been now? An undefined fear stole over her; this was foul play; this letter had been intercepted. What did it mean? She drew out the second in order, and opened it. Again, a letter from Gordon Frere; again, a letter to her--a passionate, tender, pleading, frank, hopeful letter--such a letter as a girl might well be glad and proud to receive from the man she loved; such a letter as Katharine had dreamed of, had hoped for, had longed for, in the days that were gone. It was that which Gordon had written from his father's house in the full flush of his delight, and the perfect but not presumptuous assurance of her love. Deadly cold and sickness crept over Katharine as she read this letter; her limbs grew heavy, her sight grew dim, her head grew dizzy. "I must be near fainting," she thought; "and they are not all read." She forced herself to rise from her chair, and went to the dressing-table, where she found water and eau-de-cologne. She drank a glassful of the mixture, and then returned to her task. All this time--it was in reality only a few minutes--the insensible form upon the bed lay motionless and silent.
The third letter was a short one, also written by Gordon Frere, and addressed to Mr. Guyon. It was a straightforward, manly letter, in which the writer acknowledged his unworthiness of the blessing he asked with more sincerity than such matter-of-course acknowledgments usually convey, and set forth his modest confidence in Miss Guyon's consent to become his wife. Gordon stated the prospects then opening upon him; and finally, in accordance with his father's wish, formally requested Mr. Guyon's permission to address his daughter. (The old-fashioned punctilio of the good rector had helped the unscrupulous schemer considerably, as the virtues of good men are not seldom found to aid the devices of knaves.)