"I'm going to join the ladies now, if they will have me!" he cried. "I have less of their society than I like, belonging, as I do, to the working-classes. And besides," he waved a hand, white and beautifully slender, toward them, "I know you all, unfortunately well, as it is!"
A chorus of friendly insults were thrown after him, but he dropped the curtain with no further word, and an hour later Frank encountered him walking slowly up and down the terrace in the moonlight with Katrine.
They were talking earnestly, McDermott urging something which Francis was glad to see
Katrine was far from yielding. Twice he saw her shake her head with great firmness, and once, as they came near him, he heard her say, "I will not, Dermott," and, knowing the girl as he did, Frank felt that, whatever the matter, it was settled with finality.
Try as he surely did, he found it impossible to have a word alone with her that evening, and the next morning he learned from the servants that her luggage was to be taken to the station the following day at an early hour.
She was not at luncheon, and Frank was meditating on the possibility of leaving with her on the early train, when a note was brought to him by her maid.
Would you care to walk with me now? [it read] I should like to tell you something before I leave.
KATRINE DULANY.
This was surely the unexpected, and he waited for her on the portico with the feeling that there was some mistake, and that the maid might reappear any minute to ask the missive back again.
But Katrine herself came around the corner from the greenhouses and called to him from below. She wore a black walking-skirt, a black leather jacket, and a three-cornered black hat,