Maggie laughed. She was quite steady and loyal.
“When you get to know her you will change, perhaps,” she said.
“Perhaps I know her now better than you do!”
Maggie laughed in her cheery, practical way.
“That seems hardly likely, considering that I have known her since we were children.”
Catrina shrugged her shoulders in an honest if somewhat mannerless refusal to discuss the side issue. She returned to the main question with characteristic stubbornness.
“I shall always hate her,” she said. “I am sorry she is your cousin. I shall always regret that, and I shall always hate her. There is something wrong about her—something none of you know except Karl Steinmetz. He knows every thing—Herr Steinmetz.”
“He knows a great deal,” admitted Maggie.
“Yes; and that is why he is sad. Is it not so?”
Catrina sat staring into the fire, her strange, earnest eyes almost fierce in their concentration.