People recalled Katherine now and then to wonder what she was doing and how mortified she must feel over her fiasco, and to laugh good-naturedly or sarcastically at the pricked soap-bubble of her pretensions. But the newer and present excitement of the campaign was forcing her into the comparative insignificance of all receding phenomena—when, one late September Sunday morning, Westville, or that select portion of Westville which attended the Wabash Avenue Church, was astonished by the sight of Katherine West walking very composedly up the church’s left aisle, looking in exceedingly good health and particularly stunning in a tailor-made gown of rich brown corduroy.
She quietly entered a vacant pew and slipped to a position which allowed her an unobstructed view of Doctor Sherman, and which allowed Doctor Sherman an equally unobstructed view of her. Worshippers who stared her way noticed that she seemed never to take her gaze from the figure in the pulpit; and it was remarked, after the service was over, that though Doctor Sherman’s discourses had been falling off of late—poor man, his health was failing so!—to-day’s was quite the poorest sermon he had ever preached.
The service ended, Katherine went quietly out of the church, smiling and bowing to such as met her eyes, and leaving an active tongue in every mouth behind her. So she had come back! Well, of all the nerve! Did you ever! Was she going to stay? What did she think she was going to do? And so on all the way home, to where awaited the heavy Sunday dinner on which Westville gorged itself python-like—if it be not sacrilege to compare communicants with such heathen beasts—till they could scarcely move; till, toward three o’clock, the church paper sank down upon the distended stomachs of middle age, and there arose from all the easy chairs of Westville an unrehearsed and somewhat inarticulate, but very hearty, hymnal in praise of the bounty of the Creator.
At about the time Westville was starting up this chorus, Old Hosie Hollingsworth, in Katherine’s parlour, deposited his rusty silk hat upon the square mahogany piano that had been Doctor West’s wedding gift to his wife. The old lawyer lowered himself into a rocker, crossed his attenuated legs, and shook his head.
“Land sakes—I certainly was surprised to get your note!” he repeated. “When did you get back?”
“Late last night.”
He stared admiringly at her fresh young figure.
“I must say, you don’t look much like a lawyer who has lost her first case and has sneaked out of town to hide her mortification!”
“Is that what people have been saying?” she smiled. “Well, I don’t feel like one!”
“Then you haven’t given up?”