Katharine lost her temper suddenly. She stopped and looked the young dandy in the eyes. He never forgot the look of hers, nor the paleness of her lips as she spoke.
“You’re rather young to speak like that of older men, Mr. Van De Water,” she said.
She coolly turned her back on the annihilated youth and walked away from him alone, almost as surprised at what she had done as he was. He, poor boy, got very red in the face, stood still, helped himself into countenance by sticking a single glass in his eye and then went in search of his dearest friend, the man who had just discovered that extraordinary tailor in New Burlington Street, you know.
Katharine had been half stunned by what Hester Crowdie had told her, which she felt instinctively was not more than a moiety of the truth. She had barely recovered her self-possession when she was met by what rang like an insult in her ears. It was no wonder that her blood boiled. Without looking to the right or to the left, she went forward till she was under the great balcony, and there, by one of the pillars, she came upon Bright and Crowdie talking together in low, excited tones.
Bright’s big shoulders slowly heaved as in his anger he took about twice as much breath as he needed into his lungs at every sentence. His fresh, pink face was red, and his bright blue eyes flashed visibly. What the young dandy had said was evidently true. He was still ‘leathering into’ Crowdie with all his might, which was considerable.
Crowdie, perfectly cool and collected, leaned against the wooden pillar with a disagreeable sneer on his red mouth. One hand was in his pocket; the other hung by his side, and his fingers quietly tapped a little measure upon the fluted column. Almost every one has that trick of tapping upon something in moments of anxiety or uncertainty, but the way in which it is done is very characteristic of the individual. Crowdie’s pointed white fingers did it delicately, drawing back lightly from contact with the wood, as a woman’s might, or as though he were playing upon a fine instrument.
“It’s just like you, Walter,” Bright was saying, to go about telling the thing to all the women. Didn’t I tell you this afternoon that I was the principal person concerned, that it was my business and not yours and that if I wished it kept quiet, nobody need tell? And you said yourself that you hoped Hester might not hear it, and then the very first thing I find is that you’ve told her and cousin Emma and probably Katharine herself—”
“No, I’ve not told Katharine,” said Crowdie, calmly. “I shan’t, because she loves him. The Lord knows why! Drunken beast! I shall leave the club myself, since he’s not to be turned out—”
Crowdie stopped suddenly, for he was more timid than most men, and his face plainly expressed fear at that moment—but not of Hamilton Bright. Katharine Lauderdale was looking at him over Bright’s shoulder and had plainly heard what he had said. A man’s fear of woman under certain circumstances exceeds his utmost possible fear of man. The painter knew at once that he had accidentally done Katharine something like a mortal injury. He felt as a man must feel who has accidentally shot some one while playing with a loaded pistol.
As for Katharine, this was the third blow she had received within five minutes. The fact that she was in a measure prepared for it had not diminished its force. It had the effect, however, of quenching her rising anger instead of further inflaming it, as young Van De Water’s foolish remarks had done. She begun to feel that she had a real calamity to face—something against which mere anger would have no effect. She heard every word Crowdie said, and each struck her with cruel precision in the same aching spot. But she drew herself up proudly as she came between the two men. There was something almost queenly in the quiet dignity with which she affected to ignore what she had heard, even trying to give her white lips the shadow of a civil smile as she spoke.