When Crowdie was gone, the old man looked long and earnestly at the picture. Gradually what Katharine meant by the resemblance to Hester dawned upon him, and he knit his bushy white eyebrows.
“I’m sorry you told me,” he said, at last. “I see it now—what you mean—and I don’t like it.”
“Somehow—I don’t know—it looks like a woman who’s been through something—I don’t know exactly what. Perhaps it is like an older woman—a married woman.”
“H’m—perhaps so. I think it is. Anyhow, I don’t like it.”
CHAPTER XI.
It was the habit of Robert Lauderdale, since he had been ill, to rest two hours before dinner, a fact of which Katharine was well aware, and she had sent a message to John Ralston begging him to come and see her when he came up town after business hours. But she did not mean to let him come without informing the old gentleman. Before he retired to his room late in the afternoon, she spoke to him about it.
“Of course, of course, my dear,” he answered quickly, in his hollow voice. “He may spend the day here, if he likes—and if you like.”
“Well, you see,” said Katharine, “I’ve not seen him since yesterday morning. You know, since he’s been going regularly to business, he’s not free in the daytime as he used to be. And as for letting him come to Clinton Place when papa’s at home, it’s simply out of the question.”
“Is it? Do you mean to say it’s as bad as that?”
“Yes—it’s pretty bad,” Katharine answered, thoughtfully. “We’ve not been getting on very well, papa and I. That’s why I came to you so suddenly to-day, without warning. My mother thought it would be better.”