“Strange you have never seen Harry,” Kitty continued, “but you will soon. I expect him to-morrow night or the next.”
She was going out to drive that morning, with the baby, and asked Connie to go with her; but Connie declined, saying she was not quite well, and would rather stay in the cool, quiet room if Kitty did not mind. The baby was soon ready, and as Kitty came down with her wraps on, she said to Connie: “I have just come across, in one of my trunks, a splendid photo of Harry, taken in Paris two years ago. It is on my table, if you care to see it.”
Connie thanked her, and after the carriage drove from the house, with Kitty kissing her hand to her and the baby’s little face looking out from its lace cap, she went upstairs and into Kitty’s room. On a table some books were lying, and near them a large photograph on an easel. This must be Kitty’s husband, and she went swiftly towards it, then stopped suddenly and put up her hand to wipe the mist she thought must be before her eyes, preventing her from seeing clearly. But there was no mist. She was not mistaken. Kitty’s husband was the man who had wrecked her life. She had a photograph like this one,—smaller, but like it, taken in Paris two years ago. She knew those soft, persuasive eyes, the smile around the mouth, the way the brown hair was parted on the forehead, the erect and rather haughty carriage,—all were his. She could not be mistaken, and for a moment everything around her turned black as she grasped a chair to keep from falling.
“Villain!” she said, when she could speak. “You have wronged Kitty more than you have me, and how dare you come back and face me? I believe I could strike you dead, if it were really you smiling upon me there, instead of your picture.”
Connie was terrible in her anger and resentment. All her love for the man had died out, and what she felt was indignation against him, with an intense pity for Kitty.
“What can I do to spare her? What ought I to do?” she asked herself, as she continued to look at the picture, which each moment grew more like the man who had sat with her on the Alpine bowlder and sworn eternal fidelity.
In a great emergency some minds work rapidly, and Connie’s was one of them. To stay and meet Harry was impossible without betraying herself. Betrayal meant ruin to Kitty, and something in the warm-hearted Southern girl had appealed to her strangely.
“I love her,” she whispered, “and there is the baby named for me, I know now, instead of the city where it was born. Kitty must never know what I do, and I must go away before he comes.”
But where, and how, and what excuse to give, were the problems she must work out alone. Kenneth had left that morning for Boston, where he was to meet some members of the medical faculty. He might be gone two days, and she could not consult him. She could consult no one, and must act for herself. Providentially, as it seemed to her, she found on her return to the farmhouse a letter from her aunt, saying she should sail in a few days for New York, and wished Connie would see that her house was put in order and be there to receive her. “God has surely opened a way, and I’ll go to-day,” Connie thought, as she read the letter, wondering at her calmness when her plans were finally made. Mrs. Stannard was surprised and sorry, and so was Kitty, when she returned from her drive and stopped for a moment at the farmhouse.
“Going before Harry comes? He’ll be here to-night on the late train. I’ve had a telegram,” she said, while Connie bit her lips until the blood nearly came through, the feeling within her was so strong to cry out, “He is a rascal, he is a villain, and that is why I go away.”