Let her not be judged too harshly, if she longed to be separated from Katharine just at that time. There was no ill-will, nothing like hatred, no touch of cruelty in the simple desire to be spared that daily contrast. It was rather that wish which many have felt, despairing of grace and strength to resist temptation, to have the cause of it removed, that they may find peace. A worse woman would not so long have been satisfied with beauty alone, and with compelling by her mere presence the admiration of a crowd in which no one face was dearer than the rest, nor than it should be.
She longed with all her heart to see Katharine married, as her husband did from very different reasons. Nor were his arguments bad or unkind from his point of view. He feared lest she should marry Ralston in spite of him, and he honestly believed Ralston to be a worthless young fellow, who could make no woman happy. As for his daughter, he was attached to her, fond of her, perhaps, in his cold way; though loving with him seemed to be a negative affair and not able to go much further than a cessation of fault-finding, except for his wife, who had overcome him and kept him by her beauty alone. It was not until Katharine aroused the deep-seated passion of his unsatisfied avarice that he ceased to be kind to her, as he understood kindness.
CHAPTER VI.
Katharine was in her room that afternoon towards five o’clock, when a servant knocked at her door, disturbing her as she was composing a letter to her best friend, Hester Crowdie. She looked up with an expression of annoyance as the door opened and the maid entered.
“Oh—what’s the matter?” she asked, impatiently striking the point of her pen upon the edge of the glass inkstand.
“Mr. Wingfield’s downstairs, Miss Katharine,” answered the girl.
“Oh—is he? Well—”
Katharine tapped her pen thoughtfully upon the glass again, and a quick contraction of the brow betrayed her displeasure.
“Shall I tell the gentleman that you’ll be down, Miss Katharine?” enquired the other.
“No, Annie. Tell him I’m out. That is—I’m not out, am I?”