She was standing before him, her slight figure seeming to expand into a greater height, the features glowing with strong excitement, and her hot breath coming hurriedly through her dilated nostrils, but never opening the pale lips set so firmly together. There was something terrible in her look and attitude, and it startled Wilford, who recoiled a moment from her, scarcely able to recognize the Katy hitherto so gentle and quiet. She had learned his secret, but the facts must have been distorted, he knew, or she had never been so agitated. From beneath his hair the great sweat-drops came pouring, as he tried to approach her and take the uplifted hands, motioning him aside with the words, “Not touch me; no, not touch me till you have told me who is Genevra Lambert.”
She repeated the question twice, and rallying all his strength Wilford answered her at last, “Genevra Lambert was my wife!”
“I thought so,” and the next moment Katy lay in Wilford’s arms, dead, as he feared, for there was no motion about the eyelids, no motion that he could perceive about the pulse or heart, as he laid the rigid form upon the bed and then bent every energy to restore her, even though he feared that it was hopeless.
If possible he would prefer that no one should intrude upon them now, and he chafed her icy hands and bathed her face until the eyes unclosed again, but with a shudder turned away as they met his. Then, as she grew stronger and remembered the past, she started up, exclaiming, “If Genevra Lambert is your wife, what then am I? Oh, Wilford, how could you make me not a wife, when I trusted and loved you so much?”
He knew she was laboring under a mistake, and he did not wonder at the violence of her emotions if she believed he had wronged her so cruelly, and coming nearer to her he said, “Genevra Lambert was my wife once, but is not now, for she is dead. Do you hear me, Katy? Genevra died years ago, when you were a little girl playing in the fields at home.”
By mentioning Silverton, he hoped to bring back something of her olden look, in place of the expression which troubled and frightened him. The experiment was successful, and great tears gathered in Katy’s eyes, washing out the wild, unnatural gleam, while the lips whispered, “And it was her picture Juno saw. She told me the night I came, and I tried to question you. You remember?”
Wilford did remember it, and he replied, “Yes, but I did not suppose you knew I had a picture. You have been a good wife, Katy, never to mention it since then;” and he tried to kiss her forehead, but she covered it with her hands, saying sadly, “Not yet, Wilford, I cannot bear it now. I must know the whole about Genevra. Why didn’t you tell me before? Why have you deceived me so?”
“Katy,” and Wilford grew very earnest in his attempts to defend himself, “do you remember that day we sat under the buttonwood tree, and you promised to be mine? Try and recall the incidents of that hour and see if I did not hint at some things in the past which I wished had been otherwise, and did not offer to show you the blackest page of my whole life, but you would not see it. Was that so, Katy?”
“Yes,” she answered, and he continued: “You said you were satisfied to take me as I was. You would not hear evil against me, and so I acquiesced, bidding you not shrink back if ever the time should come when you must read that page. I was to blame, I know, but there were many extenuating circumstances, much to excuse me for withholding what you would not hear.”
Wilford did not like to be censured, neither did he like to censure himself, and now that Katy was out of danger and comparatively calm, he began to build about himself a fortress of excuses for having kept from her the secret of his life.