“You—loved—Mrs.—Rutter—and she—refused you for—Oh!—what a cruel thing to do! And what a fool she was. Now I know why you have been so good to Harry. Oh, you poor, dear Uncle George. Oh, to think that you of all men! Is there any one whose heart is not bruised and broken?” she added in a helpless tone.
“Plenty of them, Kate—especially those who have been willing to stoop a little and so triumph. Harry has waited three years for some word from you; he has not asked for it, for he believes you have forgotten him; and then he was too much of a man to encroach upon another's rights. Does your breaking off with Mr. Willits alter the case in any way?—does it make any difference? Is this sailor boy always to be a wanderer—never to come home to his people and the woman he loves?”
“He'll never come back to me, Uncle George,” she said with a shudder, dropping her eyes. “I found that out the day we talked together in the park, just before he left. And he's not coming home. Father got a letter from one of his agents who had seen him. He was looking very well and was going up into the mountains—I wrote you about it. I am sorry you didn't get the letter—but of course he has written you too.”
“Suppose I should tell you that he would come back if he thought you would be glad to see him—glad in the old way?”
Kate shook her head: “He would never come. He hates me, and I don't blame him. I hate myself when I think of it all.”
“But if he should walk in now?”—he was very much afraid he would, and he was not quite ready for him yet. What he was trying to find out was not whether Kate would be glad to see Harry as a relief to her loneliness, but whether she really LOVED him.
Some tone in his voice caught her ear. She turned her head quickly and looked at him with wondering gaze, as if she would read his inmost thoughts.
“You mean that he is coming, Uncle George—that Harry IS coming home!” she exclaimed excitedly, the color ebbing from her cheeks.
“He is already here, Kate. He slept upstairs in his old room last night. I expect him in any minute.”
“Here!—in this room!” She was on her feet in an instant, her face deathly pale, her whole frame shaking. Which way should she turn to escape? To meet him face to face would bring only excruciating pain. “Oh, why didn't you tell me, Uncle George!” she burst out. “I won't see him! I can't!—not now—not here! Let me go home—let me think! No—don't stop me!” and catching up her cape and parasol she was out the door and down the steps before he could call her back or even realize that she had gone.