“I won’t go yet,” said Katharine. “I won’t go unless he’s perfectly intractable. Go and tell him that it’s all right, mother. I’ll submit quietly and stay in my room as long as he’s in the house—quite as much for my own sake as for his, you can tell him. If he asks about my apologizing, tell him that I won’t, and that I expect an apology from him. It can’t last forever. One of us will have to give in, at the end—but I won’t. You can put it all as mildly as you like, only don’t give him any impression that I’m submitting to him morally, even if I’m willing to keep out of his way.”
“Couldn’t you say something a little nicer than that, dear?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale, pleadingly, for she anticipated more trouble. “Couldn’t you say that you’d let by-gones be by-gones—or something of that sort?”
“It wouldn’t be true. These are not by-gones. They’re present things. The nice by-gones will never come back.”
Mrs. Lauderdale rose slowly to the height of her still graceful figure, and stood before her daughter for a moment. In the emotion of the past hour she had forgotten for a time her envy of the girl’s blossoming beauty. For a moment she was impelled to throw her arms round Katharine’s neck in the old way, and kiss her, and try to make things again what they had been. But something hard in the young grey eyes stopped her. She felt that she herself was not forgiven yet and might never be, altogether.
“Very well,” she said, quietly. “I’ll do my best.”
She turned and left the room, leaving Katharine still leaning back against the chest of drawers in the position she had not abandoned throughout the conversation.
When Katharine was alone, she stood up, turned round and pulled out the upper drawer. Amongst her gloves and handkerchiefs lay a photograph of John Ralston. She took it out and looked at the keen, dark face, with its set lips, its prominent bony temples, and its nervous lines that would be furrows too soon.
“You’re worth all the Lauderdales and the Wingfields put together!” she said, in a low voice.
She kissed the photograph, pressing it hard to her lips and closing her eyes.
“I wish you were here!” she said.