“And that’s the best and the simplest way of saying it, my dear,” answered Mrs. Ralston, smiling—for she was happy. “And now that it’s said, let’s talk about it.”
“How good you are!” Katharine put out her left hand, and turned, bending a little, so that her face was near her companion’s shoulder.
“I don’t know whether I’m good to be glad,” said Mrs. Ralston. “As for forgiving you—that’s for your father and mother, not for me. The only thing I didn’t like was that Jack shouldn’t have told me at once. I was hurt by that. We’ve been good friends, he and I, and he ought to have known that he could trust me.”
“We were afraid to trust anybody—except uncle Robert,” answered Katharine, simply. “And we had to trust him. That was the object of our getting married as we did.”
“Of course you could trust him perfectly, my dear. But it did no good. Jack told me all about that. If he had come to me and said it all beforehand, I could have helped a good deal. But that wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was,” protested the young girl, anxious lest Ralston should be blamed unjustly. “It was altogether my idea from beginning to end—”
“Jack didn’t tell me that—”
“No?” Katharine’s face lightened softly. “No,” she repeated, in another tone. “He wouldn’t have told you that. He would have thought that it would be like blaming me. He left that out of the truth. But it’s true, and you ought to know it. You don’t know how hard it was for me to persuade him to marry me secretly. I used every sort of argument before he would promise. It was I who thought that if we went straight to uncle Robert with our secret, he would find it so easy to give Jack just what he wanted. But Jack was right. He knew more about it than I did. However, he yielded at last. But I want you to know how hard it was. He said it was like a begging speculation. He would rather have died than have accepted money from uncle Robert. I’d have taken it, and uncle Robert offered it to me, but Jack wouldn’t let me accept it.”
“Of course not, my dear,” answered Mrs. Ralston. “That’s exactly what it would have been—a begging speculation. There’s only one thing that can excuse a secret marriage, and that’s love.”
“Well—in that case—” Katharine did not finish her sentence, but smiled happily as she turned her face away.