Contrary to her expectations, they did not come into the library, but went instead into the parlor, the door of which was partially ajar, so that every word they said could be distinctly heard where Katy sat. It would seem that they were continuing a conversation which had been interrupted by their arriving home, for Mrs. Cameron said, with the tone she always assumed when sympathizing with her son: "I am truly sorry for you. Is she never more cheerful than when I have seen her?"
"Never," and Katy could feel just how Wilford's lips shut over his teeth as he said it; "never more cheerful, but worse if anything. Why, positively the house seems so like a funeral that I hate to leave the office and go back to it at night, knowing how mopish and gloomy Katy will be."
"My poor boy, it is worse than I feared," Mrs. Cameron said, with a little sigh, while Katy, with a great gasping sob, tried to rise and go to them, to tell them she was there—the mopish Katy, who made her home so like a funeral to her husband.
But her limbs refused to move, and she sank back powerless in her chair, compelled to listen to things which no true husband should ever say to a mother of his wife, especially when that wife's error consisted principally in mourning too much for the child "which but for her imprudence might have been living then." These were Wilford's very words, and though Katy had once expected him to say them, they came upon her now with a dreadful shock, making her view herself as the murderer of her child, and thus blunting the pain she might otherwise have felt as he went on to speak of Silverton and its inhabitants, just as he would not have spoken had he known she was so near. Then, encouraged by his mother, he talked again of her, not against her, but in a way which made her poor aching heart throb as she whispered, sadly: "He is disappointed in me. I do not come up to all that he expected. I do very well, considering my low origin, but I am not what his wife should be."
Wilford had not said all this, but Katy inferred it, and every nerve quivered with anguish as the wild wish came over her that she had died on that day when she sat in the summer grass at home watching the shadows come and go and waiting for Wilford Cameron. Poor Katy! she thought her cup of sorrow full, when, alas! only a drop had as yet been poured into it. But it was filling fast, and Mrs. Cameron's words: "It might have been better with Genevra," was the first outpouring of the overwhelming torrent which for a moment bore her life and sense away. She thought they meant her baby—the little Genevra sleeping under the snow in Silverton—and her white lips answered: "Yes, it would be better," before Wilford's voice was heard, saying, as he always said: "No, I have never wished Genevra in Katy's place, though I have sometimes wondered what the result would have been had I learned in season how much I wronged her."
Was heaven and earth coming together, or what made Katy's brain so dizzy and the room so dark, as, with head bent forward and lips apart, she strained her ear to catch every word of the conversation which followed, and in which she saw glimpses of that leaf offered her once to read, and from which she had promised not to shrink should it ever be thrust upon her? But she did shrink, oh! so shudderingly, holding up her hands and striking them through the empty air as if she would thrust aside the terrible scepter risen so suddenly before her. She had heard all that she cared to hear then. Another word and she should surely die where she was, within hearing of the voices still talking of Genevra. Stopping her ears to shut out the dreadful sound, she tried to think what she should do. To gain the door and reach the street was her desire, and throwing on her wrappings she went noiselessly into the hall, and carefully turning the lock closed the door behind her, finding herself alone in the street in the dusk of a November night. But Katy was not afraid, and drawing her hood closely over her face she sped on until her own house was reached, alarming Esther with her frightened face, but explaining that she had been taken suddenly ill and returned before dinner.
"Mr. Cameron will be here soon," she said. "I do not need anything to-night, so you can leave me alone and go where you like—to the theatre, if you choose. I heard you say you wished to go. Here is the money for you and Phillips," and handing a bill to the slightly puzzled Esther, she dismissed her from the room.
Meanwhile, at the elder Cameron's, no one had a suspicion of Katy's recent presence, for the girl who had admitted her had gone to visit a sick sister, with whom she was to spend the night. Thus Katy's secret was safe, and Wilford, when at last he bade his mother good-by and started for home, was not prepared for the livid face, the bloodshot eyes, and the strange, unnatural look which met him at the threshold.
Katy was waiting for him, and answered his ring herself, her hands grasping his almost fiercely and dragging him up the stairs to her own room, where, more like a maniac than Katy Cameron, she confronted him with the startling question:
"Who is Genevra Lambert? It is time I knew before committing greater sin. Tell me, Wilford, who is she?"