'And is mother dead?' cried Kate, clasping her hands. 'What must she have thought of me.'
Ralph did not answer, but after a long silence he said:
'It's a pity, ain't it, that we didn't pull it off better together?'
Kate raised her head and looked at him quickly. Her look was full of gratitude.
'Yes,' she said, 'I behaved very badly towards you, but I believe I've been punished for it.'
'You told me that he married you and treated you very well.'
'Oh!' she said, bursting into tears, 'don't ask me, it's too long a story;
I'll tell you another time, but not now.'
It appeared to Kate that her heart was on fire and that she must die of grief. 'Was this life?' she asked herself. Oh, to be at rest and out of the way for ever! Ralph, too, seemed deeply affected; after a pause he said:
'I don't know how it was, or why, but now I come to think of it I remember that I used to be cross with you.'
'It was the asthma that made you cross, and well it might;' and she asked him if he still suffered from asthma, and he answered: