"Yes!" she answered from within.
"I want to speak to you."
There was no response.
"I must speak to you, Katrine."
He waited, fearing her new contempt, until the silence became unendurable.
"Katrine," he said, "you will either come out or I will come in."
There was another silence before there came, at the end of the lower corridor, a great commotion of quick orders given and executed, of luggage being placed, and through it all a low singing as of one much at home. It would be an awkward situation, he thought, for the servants to find him clamoring at Miss Dulany's
door, and as he moved toward the window the singing grew nearer, breaking into a loud voice at the top of the steps,
"War dogs tattered and gray,
Gnawing a naked bone,
Fighting in every clime
Every cause but our own,"
and Dermott the jaunty, the extremely elegant, in black riding-clothes, with the jewelled crop of North Carolina days, stood in the afternoon sunlight at the head of the great stairs.