Aunt Betty said, “No, dear, of course not.”
Millie said, “What does it matter what Aunt Aggie says?”
Mrs. Trenchard said, “There’s another of Aggie’s green threads. Under your chair, Millie dear. I’d better go up and see whether she wants anything.”
But Katherine rose and, standing for an instant with a little half-smile, half-frown, surveying them, moved then slowly away from them down the room.
“No. I’ll go, Mother, and apologise. I suppose I was horrid.” She left them.
She went up through the dark passages slowly, meditatively. She waited for a moment outside her aunt’s door and then knocked, heard then her aunt’s voice, “Come in!”—in tones that showed that she had been expecting some ambassador.
Katherine stood by the door, then moved forward, put her arms about Aunt Aggie and kissed her.
“I’m so sorry. I’m afraid that I hurt you. You know that I didn’t mean to.”
Upon Aunt Aggie’s dried cheeks there hovered a tiny cold and glassy tear. She drew back from Katherine’s embrace, then with a strange, almost feverish movement caught Katherine’s hand.
“It wasn’t, my dear, that you hurt me. I expect I’m too sensitive—that has always been my misfortune. But I felt” (another glassy tear now upon the other cheek) “that you and Millie are finding me tiresome now.”