John was trying to talk to Katharine near the window, but he found it impossible to shake off Alexander Senior, whose fondness for his favourite granddaughter was proverbial in the family. The old gentleman stood by, approvingly, and insisted upon leading the conversation which, with old-fashioned grandfatherly wit—or what passed for wit in the families of our grandfathers—he constantly directed upon the subject of matrimony, with an elephantine sprightliness most irritating to John Ralston, though Katharine bore it with indifferent serenity, and smiled when the old man looked at her, her features growing grave again as soon as he turned to John. She could not shake off the terrible impression she had brought with her, and yet she longed to explain to John why she felt and looked so sad. She, also, glanced often at the door. The arrival of the family lawyer would put a stop to her grandfather’s playful persecution of her, and give her a chance to say three words to John without being overheard.
Ralston stood ready, knowing that she wished to speak to him alone, and he paid little attention to Alexander Senior’s jokes. He glanced about the room and said to himself that the members of the Lauderdale tribe were a very good-looking set, from first to last. He was proud of his family just then, for he had rarely seen so many of them assembled together without the presence of any stranger, and he was most proud of Katharine’s beauty. Pallor was becoming to her, for hers was fresh and clear and youthful. It ruined her mother’s looks to be pale, especially of late, since the imperceptible lines had been drawn into very fine but clearly discernible wrinkles. Mrs. Lauderdale had told herself with tears that they were really wrinkles, but she would have been sorry to know that John, or any one else, called them by that name.
At last the lawyer came, and there was a dead silence as he entered—a tall, lantern-jawed man, clean shaven, almost bald, with prominent yellow teeth, over which his mobile lips fitted as though they had been made of shrivelled pink indiarubber. He had very light blue eyes and bushy brows that stood out in contrast to his bald scalp and beardless face like a few shaggy firs that have survived the destruction of a forest.
He spoke in an impressive manner, for he was deaf, emphasizing almost every word in every sentence. He was a New Englander by birth, as keen and provincial in New York as ever was a Scotchman in London.
Having been duly welcomed, and provided with a seat in the midst of the assembled tribe, he leisurely produced a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and a handkerchief, and proceeded to the operation of polishing the one with the other. He was provokingly slow. His chair was placed so that he sat with his back to the window, facing Mrs. Lauderdale and Mrs. Ralston, who occupied the sofa on the right of the fireplace. The two Alexanders and Bright completed the circle, while Katharine and John placed themselves behind the lawyer. John could see over his shoulder.
Not a word was spoken while Mr. Allen made his careful preparations. It could hardly be supposed that he had any traditional remnant of the old-fashioned attorney’s vanity, which made him anxious to produce an effect by taking as long as possible in settling himself to his work. He was simply a leisurely man, who had been born before the days of hurry, and was living to see hurry considered as an obsolete affectation, no longer necessary, and no longer the fashion. There is haste in some things, still, in New York, but not the haste that we of the generation in middle age remember when we were young men. Mr. Allen, however, had never been hasty; and he found himself fashionable in his old age, as he had been in his youth, long before the civil war.
When his glasses were fairly pinching the lower part of his thin grey nose, he thrust one bony hand into his breast-pocket, leaning forward as he did so, and quietly scanning the faces of his audience, one after the other. He was so very slow that John and Katharine looked at one another and smiled. From his pocket he brought out a great bundle of papers and letters, and calmly proceeded to look through them from the beginning, in search of what he wanted. Of course, the big blue envelope was the last of a number of big blue envelopes, and the last but one of all the papers.
“This is it, I think,” said Mr. Allen, with dignity and caution.
The two elder women drew two short little breaths of expectation, sat forward a little, and then thoughtfully smoothed their frocks over their knees. Alexander Junior’s knuckles cracked audibly, as he silently twined his fingers round one another, and pulled at them in his anxiety. Hamilton Bright uncrossed his legs, and recrossed them in the opposite way. Katharine sighed. She was tired of it all, before it had begun.
“Yes,” said Mr. Allen, with even more dignity, but with less caution in making the assertion, “I believe this is it.”