"Nothing, thanks; at least, nothing I would let you do."
"Sure? Well, let me know if there is. Are you really very gone on him, Kitty?"
"Please don't," said Katharine.
"All right, I won't. But I wish you would try a course of boys for a time; it would make you feel so much happier. They're so fresh and harmless."
"Even when they shoot themselves?" said Katharine.
"Oh, that's only Bobby. Must you really go? You old dear, you have done me such a lot of good. What is it, Williams?"
Mr. Wilton was in the library, the man announced, and would be glad to see either Mrs. Keeley or her daughter for a moment, and he would rather not come upstairs, as he was in a hurry. Marion gave a petulant little stamp.
"Oh, send mamma to him! How like Paul, not to care which of us he sees! Just fancy, if it were Tommy, now! Stop, though, show him up here, Williams. You will be able to congratulate him, Kitty; it will put him in a good humour. Oh, nonsense! you can wait just for that, and I haven't anything to say to him that he hasn't heard hundreds of times before."
So Katharine found herself shaking hands with him once more, and congratulating him on being engaged to her cousin, Marion Keeley. She had not seen him since the night of the thunderstorm, when he had stood in the old doorway in Essex Court, with the lamplight on his face.
"You are very good; it is kind of you to take so much interest," he was saying with frigid politeness.