Ormiston turned his head.
"I see—you wish the horse sold," he said, over his shoulder.
Katherine looked down at the sleeping baby, its round head, crowned by that delicious crest of silky hair, cuddled in against her breast. Then she looked in her brother's eyes full and steadily.
"No," she answered. "I don't want it sold, I want it shot, by you, here, to-night."
"By Jove!" the young man exclaimed, rising hastily and standing in front of her.
Katherine gazed up at him, and held the child a little closer to her breast.
"I have been alone with my baby. Don't you suppose I see how it has come about?" she asked.
"Oh, damn it all!" Ormiston cried. "I prayed, at least, you might be spared thinking of that."
He flung himself down on the sofa again—while the baby clenching its tiny fist, stretched and murmured in its sleep—and bowed himself together, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.
"I'm at the bottom of it. It's all my fault," he said. "I am haunted by the thought of that day and night, for if ever one man loved another I loved Richard. And yet if I hadn't been so cursedly keen about the horse all this might never have happened. Oh! if you only knew how often I've wished myself dead since that ghastly morning. You must hate me, Kitty. You've cause enough. Yet how the deuce could I foresee what would come about?"