Gerard and Colonel Hawthorne were out rabbiting with the keepers in the park, and only came in to tea.
Katherine found her mistress rather exacting and difficult to please, and she felt tired and cross—so it gave her some kind of satisfaction to be as provoking as possible when she was ordered to pour out the tea for the shooters in the sitting-room. She remained perfectly silent, but every now and then allowed her magnetic eyes to meet Mr. Strobridge's with the sphinxlike smile in them.
On his side Gerard had found the hours hell.—He knew he was now madly in love with this exasperating girl, and that she was exercising the most powerful attraction upon him.
He gazed at her as she sat there, white and sensuous-looking, her red lips pouting, and her grey-green eyes full of some unconscious challenge, and gradually wild excitement grew in his blood.
As soon as her actual duties were over, Katherine said respectfully:
"If Your Ladyship has no more need of me, I must get some letters finished before the post goes."
And when a nod of assent was given, she quietly left the room.
So Gerard Strobridge knew he would see her no more that night; and there would be a boring dinner with the parson, and his wife and daughter, to be got through, and on the morrow he was returning to town!
For the first time in their lives he felt resentful towards his aunt. That Seraphim should not have been more sympathetic, and have made some opportunity for him to talk again to Katherine, was quite too bad!