“You’ve been unlike yourself, dear, for some days.”
“No, mother—I’ve been just the same.”
“You’ve been unhappy.”
Katherine raised her head proudly and gave back her mother’s gaze.
“There’s been nothing—nothing at all—”
But Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes never faltered. She suddenly, with an action that was full of maternal love, but love restrained by fear of its rejection, love that had tenderness in its request to be accepted, raised her hands as though she would take her daughter, and hold her safe and never let her depart into danger again.
“Katie—” her voice was soft, and she let her hands fall again. “Give it up, dear. Break the engagement. Let him go.”
Katherine did not answer, but she raised her head higher than it had been before, and then, suddenly, as though the irony of her whole relationship with her mother, with Philip, with the very world itself, had driven in upon her, she smiled.
Mrs. Trenchard went on: “You aren’t happy, Katie, darling. We all notice it. It was so sudden, the engagement. You couldn’t tell at the time. But now—I’ve never said anything, have I? You’ve seen that I’ve been perfectly fair, but you know that I’ve never liked him—I said give it its chance. But now that he’s been down here, you can judge how different we all are—it’s plain that it won’t do. Of course you couldn’t tell at the time. But now—”
“Ah,” Katherine said quietly, “that’s why you asked him here. I wondered.”