Over breakfast they discussed an idea that had come to Kathleen.
"We must have a house warming," she said, "you know the old superstition, there'll be no luck about the house unless we have a warming!"
"To be sure!" said Sir Josiah, a little puzzled, "but I had the fires lighted and kep' going for weeks and——"
"I know!" she laughed. "But I mean a party, a house party, just a few of our nearest and dearest. You, of course, first and before all and my—" she hesitated, "my father, of course, and then you will have one or two of your own friends, Sir Josiah, won't you? Friends of yours you might like to bring down?"
His eyes shone. "Cutler!" he said. "I'd like to bring him, take the shine out of him, it will too. I'm fed up with Her Excellency, the Governor's wife, that's Cutler's daughter. Why, my love, it'll stifle him, that's what it will do! Why, of course, I'll come! And there'll be a few things, wines and spirits and like that. I'll see about them, see about 'em at once—and now——"
And now the time for parting had come, the time he had dreaded, but it must come; the car was at the door, the bags were put into the car. And the owner of the car dallied, he was in the morning room and Kathleen was with him. She put her hand on his arm and delayed him, she had smiled a signal to Allan to go out and leave them together for a moment or so, and Allan had gone.
"You have been very, very good to us, you have given us this beautiful home, you have given us more—I know—" she said and her eyes were very bright and very kind, as she stood, a queenly young figure, with her slim white hand resting on his arm—"And I want to tell you this—I want to—to earn it all. I want to earn all your kindness and affection. I want to prove myself worthy of it! You have given me all this and you have given me your son and he—he is the best of all! A little while ago I thought that I was an old, old woman; life seemed to hold very, very little for me, my whole life was one long struggle, a struggle between pride and poverty. I suffered—" she paused, "more than I can ever tell. I knew what people said of me and of—" she paused, "of—of me, and now all suddenly I seem to realise that I am not old, but that I am young, and that I am not afraid of the years that lie before me. Our marriage, Allan's and mine, was—was—at first sordid and mercenary, and I hated it, but Allan and I talked about it and we agreed, long ago, that we would make the best, the very, very best possible of our lives and I think we are doing it. I know how you love him and I know how deeply he loves you and so—so I wanted to tell you that Allan's wife will try, with God's help, to be worthy of him and of you, that she will be a good, true and faithful wife to him, helping him when she may help, comforting him if he should need comfort. Perhaps—" she said softly, "I am not a religious woman, I wish I were! But no religious woman could have prayed to her God more fervently, more from her heart than I have prayed from mine that I may never fail in my duty, that I shall be all that he would have me, that I shall be a good, true and faithful wife and friend to the man whose name I bear!"
He did not speak, his lips trembled a little, he put his arms about her and held her very tightly for a moment and then he went out, seeing nothing very clearly, for the mist that was before his eyes.
And as he drove through the little town and out into the white Sussex roads, past the green fields and under the shadow of the Downs, he remembered, not that his daughter was Lady Kathleen, daughter of the Earl of Gowerhurst, but that she was the sweetest and the best woman he had ever known.
CHAPTER XV.