"Say it isn't true—what you've just hinted, about my father and his. Say it isn't true, and I'll—tell——"
"Ho! Do you think I'm to be called to account by you, young miss?" Madam Crewe interrupted testily. "If Dr. Ballard is ready to marry you, in the face of the conditions I asked him to suppose, why, get down on your knees, and thank God for such a disinterested lover. But don't flatter yourself you can oblige me to do as you choose. I am sixty-eight years old and I will not be forced."
Dr. Ballard laughed out.
"Don't you see it's all nonsense, Katherine? The whole thing isn't worth a serious thought. If your grandmother likes to have her little joke, why, let us try to see the humor of it. Perhaps she doesn't want you to marry me. But now she sees it's inevitable, she'll——"
"No," said Katherine. "It's not inevitable. I can't marry you."
Dr. Ballard was silent, but Madam Crewe's words snapped out like sparks from a live wire.
"The day Norris was here, you said you would. You insisted you would. Does your refusal now mean you've reconsidered the conditions he suggested? You've thought better of your first decision?"
Katharine gave her a long look. It seemed to her, her humiliation was complete. And still she managed to hold herself in check.
"You make it very hard for me—you force me to say things—I—— Very well, then listen! I do love Dr. Ballard and—I'd have married him if—I could!"
He was on his feet in a second, the chair he had sat in crashing backward with the violence of the sudden spring he made from it. But Katherine was quicker than he. She turned and had run from the room before he could prevent her.