And Julius stood waiting for her, leaning against the frame of the library ladder; a spare, black figure, notably at variance with the broad glory of sunshine and colour reigning out of doors.
His usually quick instinct of courtesy was in abeyance, shaken, as he still was, and confused by the revelation that had just come to him. He looked at Lady Calmady with a new and agitated understanding. She made so fair a picture that he could only gaze dumbly at it. Tall in fact, Katherine was rendered taller by the manner—careless of passing fashion—in which her hair was dressed. The warm, brown mass of it, rolled up and back from her forehead, showed all the perfect oval of her face. Tender, lovely, smiling, her blue-brown eyes soft and lustrous, with a certain wondering serenity in their depths, there was yet something majestic about Katherine Calmady. No poor or unworthy line marred the nobility of her face or figure. The dark, arched eyebrows, the well-chiselled and slightly aquiline nose, the firm chin and throat, the shapely hands, all denoted harmony and completeness of development, and promised a reserve of strength, ready to encounter and overcome if danger were to be met. Years afterwards, the remembrance of Katherine as he just then saw her would return upon Julius, as prophetic of much. Quailing in spirit, still reluctant, in his asceticism, to comprehend and reckon with her personality in the fulness of its present manifestation, he answered her at random, and with none of the pause and playful evasiveness usual to his speech.
"I am very glad we have found you," Katherine said frankly. "I was afraid, by the fact of your not coming to breakfast, that you were overtired. We talked late last night. Did we weary you too much?"
"Existence in itself is vexatiously wearisome at times—at least to feeble persons, like myself."
Katherine's smile faded. She looked at him with charming solicitude.
"Ah! you are not well," she declared. "Go out and enjoy the sunshine. Leave all those stupid books. Go," she repeated, "order one of the horses. Go and meet Richard. He has gone over to look at the new lodge. You could ride all the way through the east woods in the cool. See, I will put these tidy."
And, as she spoke, Katherine stooped to pick up the scattered chap-books from the ground. But, in the last few moments, while looking at her, yet further understanding had overtaken Julius March. Not only the mystery of human love, but the mystery of dawning motherhood had come close to him. And he put Lady Calmady aside with a determination of authority somewhat surprising.
"No, no, pardon me! They are dusty, they will soil your hands. You must not touch those books," he said.
Katherine straightened herself up. Her face was slightly flushed, her expression full of kindly amusement.
"Dear Julius, you are very imperative. Surely I may make my hands dirty, once in a way, in a good cause? They will wash, you know, just as well as your own, after all."