Katherine Lauderdale; Vol. 2 of 2

by F. Marion Crawford

“Yes.”

“I will burn it,” said Alexander Lauderdale, still watching her.

“Yes.”

He seemed surprised, for he had expected resistance, and perhaps some attempt on her part to get possession of the letter and read it. But she stood upright, silent, and evidently disgusted. He lifted his hand and held the letter over the flame of the gas-light until it had caught fire thoroughly. Then he laid it in the fireless grate—the room, like all the rest of the house, was heated by the furnace,—and with his usual precise interpretation of his own conscience’s promptings, he turned his back on it, lest by any chance he should see and accidentally read any word of the contents as the paper curled and flared and blackened and fell to ashes. Katharine, however, was well aware that a folded letter within its envelope will rarely burn through and through if left to itself. She went to the hearth and watched it. It had fallen flat upon the tiles, and one thickness after another flamed, rose from one end and curled away as the one beneath it took fire. She would not attempt to read one of the indistinct words, but she could not help seeing that it had been a long letter, scrawled in a handwriting even more irregular than that on the envelope. The leaves turned black, one by one, rising and remaining upright like black funeral feathers, till at last there was only a little blue light far down in the heart of them. That, too, went out, and a small, final puff of smoke rose and vanished. Katharine turned the heap over with the tongs. Only one little yellow bit of paper remained unconsumed at the bottom. It was almost round, and as she turned it over, she read on it the number of the house. That was all that had not been burned.

“I’m glad to see that you look at the matter in its true light,” said her father, as she stood up again.

“How should I look at it?” asked Katharine, coldly. “Good night, mother—good night,” she repeated, nodding to her father.

She turned and left the room. A moment later she was on her way to the Van De Waters’ house, leaning back in the dark, comfortable brougham, her feet toasting on the foot-warmer, and the furs drawn up closely round her. It was a bitterly cold night, for a sharp frost had succeeded the snow-storm after sunset. Even inside the carriage Katharine could feel that there was something hard and ringing in the quality of the air which was in harmony with her own temper. She had plenty of time to go over the scene which had taken place in her mother’s room, but she felt no inclination to analyze her feelings. She only knew that this letter of John’s, written when he was still half senseless with drink, was another insult, and one deeper than any she had felt before. It was a direct insult—a sin of commission, and not merely of omission, like his absence from the ball on the previous night.

She supposed, naturally enough, that he would not appear at the dinner-party, but at that moment she was almost indifferent as to whether he should come or not. She was certainly not afraid to meet him. It would be far more probable, she thought, that he should be afraid to meet her.

It was a quarter past eight when she reached the Van De Waters’, and she was the last to arrive. It was a party of sixteen, almost all very young, and most of them unmarried—a party very carefully selected with a view to enjoyment—an intimate party, because many out of the number were more or less closely connected and related, and it was indicative of the popularity of the Lauderdales, that amongst sixteen young persons there should be four who belonged more or less to the Lauderdale tribe. There was Katharine, there was Hamilton Bright,—the Crowdies had been omitted because so many disliked Crowdie himself,—there was little Frank Miner, who was a near relation of the Van De Waters, and there stood John Ralston, talking to Ruth Van De Water, before Crowdie’s new portrait of her, as though nothing had happened.