"No great artistic success ever came to any woman, that had not its root in a dead love."
As she lay face downward, her body con
vulsed with weeping, it was ordered that Dermott McDermott should take a short cut through that part of the grounds to the boat-landing, on one of his lightning-like trips to foreign parts. He had just encountered Frank riding like the wind, his face haggard and drawn, and at the sight of Katrine's distress he drew conclusions, with rage and a dancing madness in his eye.
"If ye've hurt her, Frank Ravenel, if I find when I come back ye've hurt her, you'll answer to me for it! God! how you will answer to me!" he cried.
There is this about life: that frequently when we think the worst has happened it is but the forerunner of worse to come.
As Katrine lay tossed by misery and shame, Nora O'Grady, with her kilted linsey-woolsey skirt turned up, her white kerchief loosened over her bosom, and her brogans twinkling in her haste, came running along the road, her face twitching with sorrow. Ever and anon in her speed she dried her eyes on her apron and a moan escaped her.
"Poor heart!" she repeated. "Poor heart, she's enough to bear without this coming to her the now!"
But pushing the branches aside, she spoke in simulated anger to Katrine, a pretence which showed well the peculiar delicacy of her class. It was not for the like of her, she reasoned, to know the truth regarding Miss Katrine's relation with Mr. Ravenel; and yet she knew as accurately as if the scene of the morning had taken place before her. With clear, wise eyes she had dreaded such an ending the summer long. Nothing, she reasoned, could further hurt Katrine's pride than to have it known her love had been slighted, or to offer sympathy, no matter how hiddenly. And so she feigned well an anger she was far from feeling, in an intentional misunderstanding.
Looking down at the prostrate figure, she began, in a shrill voice: