“But I wasn’t running,” answered the young girl. “Of course I’ll stay if you want me. I thought you were busy.”
“Oh, no—I was only writing a note. I’ve finished—and—and I should be awfully glad if you’d stay a little while.”
Katharine glanced at his face and saw that he was embarrassed. She wondered what was in his mind as she sat down. He had risen from his seat and seemed to hesitate about taking another. When a man hesitates to sit down in order to talk to a woman, only two suppositions are possible. Either he does not wish to be caught and obliged to stay with her, or he has something important to say, and thinks that he can talk better on his legs than seated, which is true for nine men out of ten. Bright at last decided in favour of standing by the fireplace, resting one elbow upon the shelf and thrusting one hand into his pocket. Katharine could hear the soft jingle of his little bunch of keys. She expected that he meant to say something about the difficulty of their relative positions in regard to the will, which must lead to her putting an end to her visit immediately. So long as the subject had not been mentioned the position had been tenable, but if it were once discussed, she felt that she should be obliged to go away at once. She could not well accept the hospitality of her father’s bitterest opponents, though they were her friends and relations, if once the position were clearly defined.
“What is it?” she asked, after a short pause, by way of helping him, for by this time she was sure that he had something to say to her.
“Oh—nothing—” He hesitated. “That is—I only wanted to talk to you a little—that is, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all!” answered Katharine, with a smile in which she tried to turn her amusement into encouragement.
Except at great moments, almost all women are wickedly amused when a man is embarrassed in attacking a difficult subject. The more kind-hearted ones, like Katharine, will often help a man. The cynical ones get all the diversion they can out of the situation and give a graphic account of it to the first intimate friend who turns up afterwards. Katharine really thought he meant to speak of the will, and the position struck her as absurd. She was in the position of having forced herself upon the hospitality of her father’s enemies. She wondered how Bright would put the matter, and, woman-like, at the same moment she catalogued her belongings as they lay about her room upstairs and calculated roughly that it might take her as much as an hour to pack all her things if she decided to go that evening. Still Bright said nothing.
“It seems to be rather a serious matter,” she said, assuming that he had not asked her to stay in order to talk about the weather.
“Well—it is pretty serious for me,” he answered. “It amounts to this. I don’t know whether you’ve ever noticed anything, so I’m not sure just how to begin. I’d like to make a straight statement if you wouldn’t mind—that is—if I were sure of not offending you.”
“I don’t exactly see how you can offend me,” answered Katharine, gravely. “If it’s about the will, I suppose we think alike, only I’d hoped that we might not bring it up and talk about it just yet. But if you’re going to do that, I’d rather you’d let me speak first. I think I should anticipate what you were going to say. I’d rather—and it would be less trouble for you.”