“I’m not so sure,” said Millie slowly, “that Mother thinks that. I believe she’s half afraid of Philip running off and then Katie following him. That’s why she’s been so nice to him lately, although she can’t bear him. Of course if she knew all this that we know he’d have to go—she wouldn’t have him in the house five minutes, and Father would do what Mother told him of course. And now that you’ve been an idiot enough to tell Aunt Aggie, it’s all up.... The only hope is that Katie will chuck it all and follow him!”
“What!” cried Henry aghast. “You’d like her to!”
“Why, of course,” said Millie, “there isn’t anything compared with the sort of thing Katie feels for Philip—Home and the family? Why, they’ve all got to go in these days! That’s what people like the aunts and fathers and the rest of the old fogeys round here don’t see. But they’ll have to see soon.... But mother’s cleverer than they are. At least she is about Katie, because she loves her so much.”
“My word!” said Henry, in the husky voice that always came when he admired anybody. “You’ve changed an awful lot lately, Millie.”
“Yes, I suppose I have,” she answered, complacently.
They talked very little after that, for the reason that in the village Henry bought Millie some bulls-eyes, because he felt in a confused kind of way that he admired her more than he had ever done.
Millie had also another reason for silence; she was thinking very hard. During those few days in London she had lived in a world of thrilling expectation. She hoped that every moment would announce the elopement of Katherine and Philip. After her conversation with her sister, it had seemed to her that this elopement was inevitable. On every occasion of the opening of a door in the London house her heart had leapt in her breast. She had watched the lovers with eyes that were absorbed. Ah! if only they would take her more thoroughly into their confidence, would put themselves into her hands. She’d manage for them—she’d arrange everything most beautifully. This was the most romantic hour of her life....
But now, after Henry’s revelation, Millie’s thoughts were turned upon her mother. Of course her mother would expel Philip—then there was a danger that Philip would return to that living, fascinating creature in Russia, the mysterious, smiling Anna. Millie had created that figure for herself now, had thought and wondered and dreamed of her so often that she saw her bright and vivid and desperately dangerous, thin and dark and beautiful against a background of eternal snow.
There they were—her mother and Anna and Katherine, with Philip, poor Philip, in between them all. It was truly a wonderful time for Millie, who regarded all this as a prologue to her own later dazzling history. She did not know that, after all, she blamed Henry very desperately for his foolishness. The thrilling crisis was but brought the nearer.
Meanwhile the first thing that she did was to inform Katherine of Henry’s treachery.